[Short communication: determination of hepatitis C virus genotypes by INNO-LIPA and sequence analysis methods]

The detection of genotypes of hepatitis C virus (HCV) which exhibit very high genetic variability, has a great impact for the therapy and follow-up of the chronicity of infections. The aim of this study was to detect the genotypes of HCV strains by using two different methods. Thirty patients (5 hemodialysis patients, 9 chronic hepatitis C patients, 5 blood donors, 1 hospital staff) who were positive for both anti-HCV (Vitros, Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics) and HCV-RNA (Rotorgene, Artus) were included to the study. The serum samples were studied by Inno-LIPA (Inno-LIPA HCV-II, Innogenetics, Belgium) and sequence analysis (9700 Sequence Detection System, and ABI PRISM 310 Genetic Analyzer, Applied Biosystems, USA) methods. For Inno-LIPA, 5'non-coding region (5'NCR) of HCV-RNA was amplified by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and genotyped by line probes. For sequence analysis (SA), NS5B and 5'NCR regions were amplified by RT-PCR, and genotypic variations were assessed by Cycle Sequencing system (Applied Biosystems, USA). As a result, one strain was found as 1a, and 28 strains were found as 1b with both Inno-LIPA and SA methods, however, one strain was genotyped as 1b/3a by Inno-LIPA, but as 1b by SA method. Our data have indicated that the results obtained by Inno-LIPA and sequence analysis methods were in concordance for the detection of HCV genotypes, considering that they have similar sensitivities.