Pawlotsky Jean-Michel
Department of Virology, Henri Mondor Hospital, University of Paris XII, Créteil, France.
Semin Liver Dis. 2003;23 Suppl 1:3-11. doi: 10.1055/s-2003-41629.
Virological tools play a major role in the diagnosis of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and in ongoing decision-making based on the patient's virological response to therapy. Virological tools used to assess viral kinetics and viral genomics can also be applied to clinical and translational research, especially in studies aimed at understanding the mechanisms underlying HCV treatment failure. Viral kinetics studies are based on quantification of HCV RNA at prescribed intervals during treatment and mathematical modeling of HCV RNA dynamics. These studies require sensitive and specific HCV RNA assays with an extended dynamic range of quantification. Viral genomics methods are useful to correlate viral kinetics with the intrinsic genomic characteristics of the HCV infecting strain. The interpretation of results utilizing various viral genomics tools is difficult, however, and must include predictive structural and functional genomic analyses. These approaches will be particularly useful in studying the mechanisms of HCV treatment failure with new HCV inhibitors currently under development.
病毒学工具在丙型肝炎病毒（HCV）感染的诊断以及基于患者对治疗的病毒学反应进行持续决策方面发挥着重要作用。用于评估病毒动力学和病毒基因组学的病毒学工具也可应用于临床和转化研究，特别是在旨在了解HCV治疗失败潜在机制的研究中。病毒动力学研究基于治疗期间按规定间隔对HCV RNA进行定量以及对HCV RNA动态变化进行数学建模。这些研究需要具有扩展定量动态范围的灵敏且特异的HCV RNA检测方法。病毒基因组学方法有助于将病毒动力学与感染HCV毒株的内在基因组特征相关联。然而，利用各种病毒基因组学工具对结果进行解释很困难，且必须包括预测性的结构和功能基因组分析。这些方法在研究目前正在研发的新型HCV抑制剂治疗失败机制方面将特别有用。
