Virological Tools Fail to Properly Identify "Unusual" Hepatitis C Virus Subtypes Resistant to Direct-Acting Antiviral...

We evaluated the ability of the commercial Sentosa SQ Hepatitis C Virus Genotyping Assay to identify the hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype subtype in patients from The Gambia. Subtype was determined from the Sentosa-generated NS5B sequences using 3 bioanalytical methods: Sentosa SQ HCV Genotyping Assay bioanalytical tool, Geno2pheno, and the National Reference Center in-house method. The Sentosa assay result agreed with the reference method in only 2 of 13 cases. This study highlights the difficulty of correctly identifying HCV subtypes in a region of Africa with a high diversity of HCV genotype 1 and 2 subtypes that may be resistant to antivirals.