Anti-HCV reactive volunteer blood donors distribution character and genotypes switch in Xi’an, China | Yue et al. Virology Journal 2010 7 186 http content 7 1 186 VIROLOGY JOURNAL RESEARCH Open Access Anti-HCV reactive volunteer blood donors distribution character and genotypes switch in Xi an China -S-I 1w 71 3 2 2 1 2 Qiao-hong Yue Xian-qing Zhang Yu Shang Yao-zhen Chen Wen-li Sun Min-quan Su Shi-jie Mu Xiao-ke Hao1 Xing-bin Hu2 Abstract HCV is prevailed in the world as well as in China. Blood transfusion is one of the most common transmission pathways of this pathogen. Although data of HCV infection character were reported during the past years anti-HCV reactive profile of China donors was not fully clear yet. Furthermore infection progress was found related to the HCV genotype. Different genotype led to different efficacy when interferon was introduced into HCV therapy. Here we provided character data of HCV infection in China blood donors from the year of 2000 to 2009. The infection rate in local donors was lower than general population and descended from to or so in recent years. About 83 HCV strains were categorized into genotypes 1b and 2a. But 1b subtype cases climbed and 2a subtype cases decreased. The current study threw more light on HCV infection of blood donors in China at least in the Northern region. Background Hepatitis C virus HCV infection rate is about 3 and more than 170 million people are currently infected by HCV in the world 1 . More than million new sufferers annually occurred 2 . The situation is more serious in China because more than 50 million HCV cases located in this country 3 . This infection mainly transmitted by blood transfusion in China could progress to cirrhosis liver and hepatocarcinoma 4 . HCV is an enveloped virus with a single strand positive and non- fragment RNA. The genome of HCV is about 9 400 nucleotides which encodes approximately 3 000 amino acids 5 . The high heterogenic nucleotides of HCV were confirmed and at least six different genotypes have generally been divided 6 7 . Furthermore
