Liver cancer is the 5th most common cancer caused mainly due to the late detection of hepatitis. Therefore, the early detection of hepatitis through genetic markers boosts effective and remedial management. In addition, to determine the occurrence of hepatitis C virus (HCV), genotyping is indispensable as majority of hepatitis cases remain undiagnosed. The current study was designed to find the gene expression of proteases and proteases inhibitors in different hepatitis patients and to determine HCV genotypes mainly focusing on untypeable genotypes of HCV in Abbottabad, Pakistan. PCR was conducted to find the expression of proteases and protease inhibitors genes in hepatitis patients and healthy individuals. HCV genotyping was done by PCR based method and untypeable genotypes were sequenced and verified using online tools. Controlled individuals showed normal expression of cystatin C and leptin, low expression of cathepsin B while high expression of other studied genes including cathepsin D and G, TPP1 and serpin B1 could be seen. Hepatitis A patients showed high expression of leptin while other genes showed low expression. Hepatitis B patients revealed considerable variations in the cathepsin and cystatin C gene expression. Therefore, low cystatin C (high cathepsin B) and/or high cystatin C (low cathepsin B) levels can be regarded as a potential marker for hepatitis B. Hepatitis C infected patients showed high gene expression of cystatin C and leptin, so they could be useful markers for the diagnostics and prediction of the severity of HCV infections. While genotyping findings showed that about 45% of total PCR positive samples (110) were found to be of 3a genotype followed by 3b in 18%, 1a in 13.6% and 1b in 10%. About 9% of infections turned out to be mixed infections, whereas only 4.5% were untraceable by our genotyping system. Sequencing of untypeable genotypes and applying online tools revealed that the described untypeable genotypes of HCV were in fact variants of 3a genotype. Furthermore, full length characterization of these variants could help to classify them into types and subtypes. Keywords: hepatitis; genotyping; genes expression; proteases and protease inhibitors; ML; NJ.
【저자키워드】 Hepatitis, genotyping, ML, genes expression, proteases and protease inhibitors, NJ.,