European Journal of Biotechnology and Bioscience

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

Abstract
Background: Hepatitis G (HGV) is a newly discovered hepatotropic virus but there is controversy about the role of HGV infection in the pathogenesis of chronic liver disease. There is no information about the frequency of hepatitis G with liver dysfunction in treatment responders hepatitis C patients. The objective of study was to assess liver functions of treatment responder hepatitis C patients and to detect the presence of GBV-C/HGV virus in these patients. The association of GBV-C/HGV with liver dysfunction and its frequency in treatment responder hepatitis C patients was also determined. Methods: 250 treatment responder hepatitis C patients with liver dysfunction were recruited for this cross-sectional study. LFTs were checked and HGV RNA was investigated 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 ± 5.55. Males constituted 38.4 % (N=96) while female constituted 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.