Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Athens University Medical School, Athens, Greece.
J Viral Hepat. 2012 Mar;19(3):182-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2893.2011.01502.x. Epub 2011 Oct 4.
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major cause for chronic liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma. The HCV-ARF/core+1 protein is an alternative product of HCV core-encoding sequence of unknown biological function. Highly purified HCV core and ARF/core+1 recombinant proteins from HCV genotype 1a and HCV-ARF/core+1 recombinant protein from HCV genotype 3a were expressed in Escherichia coli. Using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, we assessed the prevalence of anti-ARF/core+1 antibodies in 90 chronic hepatitis C patients infected with HCV genotypes 1a/1b or 3a, treated with pegylated interferon (Peg-IFN-a-2a) plus ribavirin. Samples derived from 92 healthy blood donors were used as negative controls. All HCV-RNA-positive serum samples reacted with core 1a antigen, while 15 (37.5%) of 40 and 14 (28%) of 50 patients infected with HCV-1a/1b and HCV-3a, respectively, were found to have anti-ARF/core+1 antibodies into their serum before treatment initiation. These antibodies were persistently present during treatment follow-up and linked to elevated levels of HCV-RNA at baseline.
丙型肝炎病毒 (HCV) 感染是慢性肝病和肝细胞癌的主要病因。HCV-ARF/core+1 蛋白是 HCV 核心编码序列的替代产物，其生物学功能未知。从 HCV 基因型 1a 和 HCV-ARF/core+1 的 HCV 中高度纯化的核心和 ARF/core+1 重组蛋白在大肠杆菌中表达。我们使用酶联免疫吸附试验评估了 90 例慢性丙型肝炎患者（感染 HCV 基因型 1a/1b 或 3a）中抗-ARF/core+1 抗体的流行情况，这些患者接受了聚乙二醇干扰素 (Peg-IFN-a-2a) 加利巴韦林治疗。来自 92 名健康献血者的样本被用作阴性对照。所有 HCV-RNA 阳性血清样本均与核心 1a 抗原发生反应，而在接受治疗前，分别有 15 例（37.5%）感染 HCV-1a/1b 和 14 例（28%）感染 HCV-3a 的患者的血清中存在抗-ARF/core+1 抗体。这些抗体在治疗随访期间持续存在，并与基线时 HCV-RNA 水平升高有关。
