RESUMO
The hepatitis C virus (HCV) outbreak that occurred between 1940 and 1999 in a closed leprosy sanatorium located on a small island in Japan was analyzed. The analysis of 318 nucleotides in the NS5B region of HCV allowed us to establish the existence of at least three different HCV strains in this sanatorium.
Assuntos
Infecção Hospitalar/epidemiologia , Surtos de Doenças , Hepacivirus/classificação , Hepatite C/epidemiologia , Análise por Conglomerados , Infecção Hospitalar/virologia , Feminino , Genótipo , Hepacivirus/genética , Hepacivirus/isolamento & purificação , Hepatite C/virologia , Humanos , Japão/epidemiologia , Masculino , Epidemiologia Molecular , Análise de Sequência de DNA , Homologia de Sequência , Proteínas não Estruturais Virais/genéticaRESUMO
Oku-Komyo-En is one of the national leprosy sanatoria, located on a small island in Setouchi city, Okayama prefecture of Japan since 1938. Since autopsies were carried out routinely on almost all patients who had died in the sanatorium up to 1980, approximately 1,000 formalin-fixed autopsy tissue samples were available for analysis. When these samples were reviewed, the pathological data indicated a sharp rise in the death rate caused by cirrhosis of the liver and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) since 1960 and 1970, respectively. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a common cause of HCC in Japan. The presence of HCV RNA was demonstrated in paraffin sections prepared from the autopsied liver tissue fixed in formalin for a prolonged period of time, by employing nested RT-PCR using type-specific primers. The data showed that HCV RNA was detectable in samples of the liver archived as early as 1940, representing the liver tissues kept in formalin for up to 67 years. HCV genotypes 1b and 2a were found by RT-PCR at 85.7% and 14.3%, respectively, in patients with leprosy.