Maggi F, Fornai C, Morrica A, Vatteroni M L, Giorgi M, Marchi S, Ciccorossi P, Bendinelli M, Pistello M
Department of Biomedicine and Retrovirus Center, University of Pisa, Italy.
J Med Virol. 1999 Jan;57(1):57-63.
In infected individuals, hepatitis C virus (HCV) exists as a variably complex population of related genetic variants known as quasispecies. The quasispecies of HCV were studied previously in 10 chronically infected patients by single-strand conformation polymorphism analysis of a segment of the envelope gene E2/NS1 containing the hypervariable region 1 and it was found that certain variants (LC variants) were present both in the liver and in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), others (L variants) were present in the liver but not in the PBMC, and still others (C variants) showed the opposite distribution. The sequence data obtained from nine such patients are reported, indicating that, within individual subjects, L and C variants are distinct phylogenetically. Results are described on the growth of HCV in stimulated healthy donor PBMC cultures supporting the concept that genetic divergence might stem, at least in part, from virus adaptation to growth in different cell types. This information may help to understand how HCV persists and produces disease in infected patients, especially with regard to extrahepatic pathology.
在受感染个体中，丙型肝炎病毒（HCV）以一种称为准种的相关基因变体的可变复杂群体形式存在。先前通过对包含高变区1的包膜基因E2/NS1片段进行单链构象多态性分析，对10例慢性感染患者的HCV准种进行了研究，发现某些变体（LC变体）同时存在于肝脏和外周血单核细胞（PBMC）中，其他变体（L变体）存在于肝脏中但不存在于PBMC中，还有一些变体（C变体）则呈现相反的分布。报告了从9例此类患者获得的序列数据，表明在个体受试者中，L和C变体在系统发育上是不同的。描述了HCV在刺激的健康供体PBMC培养物中的生长结果，支持了遗传差异可能至少部分源于病毒对不同细胞类型生长的适应性这一概念。这些信息可能有助于理解HCV在感染患者中如何持续存在并引发疾病，特别是在肝外病理学方面。
