Okumura A, Yoshioka K, Aiyama T, Takayanagi M, Iwata K, Ishikawa T, Kakumu S
First Department of Internal Medicine, Aichi Medical University, Aichi-ken, Japan.
Dig Dis Sci. 1998 Feb;43(2):377-83. doi: 10.1023/a:1018822926124.
We searched for the presence of the plus or minus strand of hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from three patients with chronic HCV infection using the strand-specific reverse transcription and polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method. To examine whether the HCV population of PBMCs differs from that of plasma, a sequence of the hypervariable region (HVR) in the E2/NS1 region was analyzed. All three patients had both plus and minus strands of HCV RNA in their PBMCs. Sequence study revealed that the HCV population in PBMCs was homogeneous in all patients, while that in plasma was composed of two main clones. One of these had the same sequence as the clones seen in PBMCs, except for one patient. Our results suggest that PBMCs represent one of the extrahepatic replication sites of HCV and that tissue tropism is expressed by some of the HCV population.
我们采用链特异性逆转录聚合酶链反应（RT-PCR）方法，在三名慢性丙型肝炎病毒（HCV）感染患者的外周血单个核细胞（PBMC）中寻找HCV RNA正链或负链的存在情况。为了检测PBMC中的HCV群体是否与血浆中的不同，我们分析了E2/NS1区域高变区（HVR）的序列。所有三名患者的PBMC中均存在HCV RNA的正链和负链。序列研究显示，所有患者PBMC中的HCV群体均为同源性，而血浆中的HCV群体由两个主要克隆组成。其中一个克隆的序列与PBMC中所见的克隆相同，但有一名患者除外。我们的结果表明，PBMC是HCV肝外复制位点之一，并且某些HCV群体表现出组织嗜性。
