Effect of immunosuppression on composition of quasispecies population of hepatitis C virus in patients with chronic hepatitis C coinfected with human immunodeficiency virus

HCV quasispecies evolution: association with progression to end-stage liver disease in hemophiliacs infected with HCV or HCV/HIV

“…HCV quasispecies complexity and diversity have been examined in relation to HIV-related immunosuppression, [29][30][31] patient response to interferon-based treatment, 8,[32][33][34][35][36][37] response to liver transplantation, 9,38-41 and in patients with alcoholism 18,42 or hemophilia. 43 These studies have generated conflicting results.…”

Hepatitis C virus quasispecies in HIV-infected women: Role of injecting drug use and highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART)

“…44 Despite the fact that HIV/HCV coinfection is common and may have grave clinical consequences, few studies have analyzed factors affecting HCV quasispecies in this setting. Two different studies found correlation between CD4ϩ cell count and HCV diversity, assessed as genetic distance, 29,30 but in a third study correlation was statistically not significant. 31 No relationship was found between CD4ϩ cell count and quasispecies complexity in any of these 3 reports.…”

“…In the few studies that were published, the number of analyzed patients was small and the role of associated factors could not be properly analyzed. [29][30][31] The current study is the first systematic analysis of quasispecies complexity and dynamics in a large cohort of HIV-positive women taking into account the impact of multiple epidemiological factors and HAART.…”

Molecular Evolution of Hepatitis Viruses

“…In addition, HIV-1 co-infection seems to impact the quasispecies complexity exhibited by HCV. Both an increase and a decrease of quasispecies heterogeneity has been described, when compared to HCV mono-infected patients (Sherman et al, 1996;Toyoda et al, 1997). In spite of the conflicting results, many reports suggest a relatively low level of HCV quasispecies diversity before HAART, and an increase in diversity after prolonged treatment, principally due to a significant increase in both synonymous and non-synonymous substitution rates in the hypervariable region 1 of HCV E2 (Bernini, et al, 2011).…”