The Relationship between the Molecular Epidemiology of Hepatitis C and the Best Measures to Prevent and Combat Infection and to Identify the Causes

Abstract

Hepatitis C is an infectious disease affecting the liver, caused by the hepatitis C virus. The infection is often asymptomatic, but once established, chronic infection can progress to scarring of the liver (fibrosis), and advanced scarring (cirrhosis) which is generally apparent after many years.  The aimof our study arestrengthening ofsurveys of the cases of Hepatitis C, more knowledge of the causes leading to epidemics of hepatitis C,  also knowing the risk factors which caused delay in the treatment of patients in the acute phase,  then  evaluate the number of persons who have the hepatitis C virus, finally molecular characterization and epidemiology of the isolated hepatitis C .In order to reach those goals  we carried out a survey of 1929 adult patients in the Department of virology at Central Laboratory of the Ministry of Health in Amman the capital of Jordan between january 2010 to December 2011 using a bioelisa HCV 4.0 is an immunoenzymatic .  Then total RNA have been  extracted from the recovered HCV using standard protocols. After that molecular epidemiology was performed using standard methods for PCR . Finally  detectable HCV RNA were submitted to  treatment follow using Real Time PCR. a total of 1926 patients (1215 males, 711 females) were tested for anti-HCV antibodies, a total 149 patients were gave positive  results for anti-HCV antibodies, with an overall prevalence of  9.%. The seroprevalence in males was approximately the double of that of females (66%  vs 48%). The most commonly caused of HCV infection was blood transfusion( 68%). Kidney dialysis ( 17%). Centre foraddiction ( 6%).  unknown cause (9%)Form  last results we conclude  that   the most cause of HCV is blood transfusion then Kidney dialysis.

Keywords: Hepatitis C, HCV antibody, PCR, Jordan