Hepatitis C Virus Infection Caused by Infrequent Exposure in China Should Be of Concern
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LETTER
Hepatitis C Virus Infection Caused by Infrequent Exposure in China Should Be of Concern Xin-Cheng Qin1 • Li-Hua Zhong2 • Li-Ying Zhu2 • Alexander Plyusnin1,3 • Yong-Zhen Zhang1,4 Received: 26 April 2019 / Accepted: 2 December 2019 Ó Wuhan Institute of Virology, CAS 2020
Dear Editor, Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) infection is a huge public health problem globally, because it can lead to adverse long-term clinical outcomes. In China, the population has experienced a skyrocketing growth of HCV infections because of paid blood donations in the late 1980s to early 1990s (Lu et al. 2013; Yin et al. 2015). Fortunately, the prevalence of HCV infection has declined dramatically since mid-1990s and was less than 1% in recent years (Cui and Jia 2013; Fu et al. 2010). However, the huge size of population in China makes a quite enormous absolute number of people infected with HCV. Like other agents causing blood-borne diseases, HCV is mainly transmitted through exchange of bodily fluids and intravenous drug use, as well as vertical transmission (Lauer and Walker 2001). Compared to the more in-depth understanding on infection and virus transmission in high-risk groups, limited data are available concerning the HCV infection caused by infrequent exposure in general population. Herein, we documented two sisters with chronic HCV infection and our attempts to dissect the transmission routes of their infections. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12250-019-00191-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Yong-Zhen Zhang [email protected] 1
State Key Laboratory of Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, Department of Zoonoses, National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing 102206, China
2
Department of Infectious Diseases, The Fourth Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin 150081, China
3
Department of Virology, Haartman Institute, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland
4
Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center & Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
The two patients went to Department of Infectious Disease of the Fourth Hospital of Harbin Medical University in Heilongjiang Province of China seeking for medical advice for the reason that they felt weakness and fatigue without obvious inducement. The elder sister was 48 years old, she stated that she was detected HCV antibody-positive in routine annual physical exams 3 years ago. The younger one was 45 years old and was diagnosed with HCV infection half a year ago. Results of quantitative PCR showed that the elder sister’s HCV-RNA load was 6.27 9 105 IU/mL and the younger sister’s was 1.11 9 106 IU/mL. HCV genotyping revealed that both were infected with the genotype 2a virus. None of them had received any anti-HCV therapy before. Biochemical examination revealed
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