New Hepatitis C Virus Subtype Resistant to Antivirals

A newly discovered hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 1 subtype harbors multiple resistance-associated mutations that combine to block therapeutic effect of NS5A inhibitor direct-acting antivirals (DAAs).

Josep Quer, PhD, Liver Disease Laboratory-Viral Hepatitis, Vall d'Hebron Institut Recerca-Hospital Universitari, Barcelona and colleagues report the identification of a new HCV genotype 1 subtype isolated from a treatment-naive patient in Equatorial Guinea.

"This novel isolate was identified during routine classification of the HCV virus in patient samples using a high-resolution HCV subtyping method," Quer and colleagues wrote. "Phylogenetic analysis, genetic distance analysis, and sliding window analysis of this genome (GenBank KY348757) clearly demonstrated that our isolate is not a recombinant product of different subtypes and that the genetic distance to the closest accepted reference sequence is higher than 15%."

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