European Journal of Biotechnology and Bioscience

Authors
Uzma Najam, Syed Tousif Ahmed, Rubina Ghani, Ahsan Suleman

Abstract
Background: A newly revealed hepatotropic virus is Hepatitis G (HGV) however there is debate about the role of HGV infection in chronic liver disease. The objective of study was to detect the presence of GBV-C/HGV virus in treatment responder hepatitis C patients and the association of GBV-C/HGV with liver dysfunction and its frequency was also found out. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 250 treatment responder hepatitis C subjects with liver dysfunction. LFTs were assessed and HGV RNA was explored in serum samples by reverse transcription and polymerase chain reaction amplification. LFTs of sero-positive and sero-negative HGV patients were compared. Data was analyzed on SPSS version 20. Results: A total of 250 treatment responder hepatitis C patients were evaluated with a mean age 44 ± 5.55years. Males comprised 38.4 % (N=96) while female represented 61.6% (N=154) of our study group. Out of total study subjects 18 (7.2%) of the study subjects were Hepatitis G positive. Highly significant difference of mean LFTs was found between hepatitis G positive and negative patients with p-value ˂ 0.01. We found highly significant and positive association of Hepatitis G with total billirubin, direct billirubin, indirect billirubin, GGT and APTT (p-value ˂ 0.01 at 95% CI). Conclusion: Liver dysfunction in treatment responder hepatitis C patients is found to be associated with novel Hepatitis G virus.