High Prevalence of GB Virus C in Brazil and Molecular Evidence for Intrafamilial Transmission

Abstract

The prevalence of GB virus C (GBV-C) in candidate Brazilian blood donors with normal and elevated alanine aminotransferase levels was found to be 5.2% (5 of 95) and 6.5% (5 of 76), respectively. Among Brazilian patients, GBV-C was found in 9.5% (13 of 137) of cases of hepatitis not caused by hepatitis A virus (HAV), HBV, HCV, HDV, or HEV (non-A-E hepatitis) and in 18.2% (8 of 44) of individuals infected with HCV. Molecular characterization of GBV-C by partial sequencing of the NS3 region showed clustering between members of a single family, implying intrafamilial transmission. In conclusion, these results together suggest that contagion mechanisms which facilitate intrafamilial transmission of GBV-C may partially explain the high prevalence of viremic carriers worldwide.

Chronic hepatitis C infection: Influence of the viral load, genotypes, and GBV‐C/HGV coinfection on the severity of the disease in a Brazilian population

“…However, the present ®ndings indicate clearly that all three HGV genotypes occur in Brazil. GBV-C/HGV coinfection in patients with chronic HCV infection in Southern Brazil has been reported to be 10% in one study [Lampe et al, 1997] and 18.2% in another [Pinho et al, 1999]. However, neither of these studies investigated whether GBV-C/HGV coinfection or genotype in¯uence severity of the disease.…”

“…However, this information, as well as information about previous blood transfusions, is derived from the patients themselves and there is an inherent possibility of bias in determining the routes of infection with the different genotypes. The prevalence of GBV-C/HGV infections in Brazilian blood donors ranges from 5.25% to 18% in different areas [Bassit et al, 1998;Lampe et al, 1998;Pinho et al, 1999]. However, to date, genotyping had not been performed on Brazilian isolates.…”

Global prevalence of human pegivirus‐1 in healthy volunteer blood donors: a systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…In 6 studies , the samples did not include blood donors, 2 studies were carried out on commercial blood donors, and the remaining 3 did not use molecular tests for detecting HPgV‐1. We ended up including 79 studies in the systematic review . The Supplementary content table presents the characteristics of included studies.…”

“…The prevalence rates were reported from a wide range of countries spanning all continents. Five studies reported data from North America, 11 from South America, 21 from Europe, 33 from Asia, 5 from Africa, 2 from Australia, and 1 from both North America and Europe (we did not pool this study for results based on continent of origin). Demographic data were not consistently reported across studies, and we were not able to perform subgroup analyses based on age or gender.…”

“…Also, 7 studies had a minor number of donors who were seropositive for HBV/HCV, and one study had some donors with raised ALT (alanine aminotransferase) levels , but we could no separate their data from the overall results published in the study. Therefore, we decided to exclude these 16 articles from the meta‐analysis leaving us with a total of 63 studies for the quantitative research. It is noteworthy that the 16 excluded articles included the 11 high risk of bias studies found in our methodological review.…”