Minerva Pediatrics 2021 Dec 03

DOI: 10.23736/S2724-5276.21.06564-2

Copyright © 2021 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Hepatitis C virus-specific markers in pediatric patients with chronic hepatitis C

Lyudmila NIKOLAEVA ¹ ✉, Elena LEYBMAN ^{1, 2}, Evgeniy SAMOKHVALOV ¹, Karen KYUREGYAN ³, Vera KICHATOVA ³, Olga ISAEVA ³, Victor KUPRIANOV ⁴

¹ Department of Molecular Virology, Ivanovsky Institute of Virology, Gamaleya National Research Centre of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Ministry of Health, Moscow, Russian Federation; ² Department of Children’s Infectious Diseases, Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, Ministry of Health, Moscow, Russian Federation; ³ Department of Virology, Russian Medical Academy of Continuing Professional Education, Ministry of Health, Moscow, Russian Federation; ⁴ Department of Molecular Biology of Microorganisms, Skryabin Institute of Bioengineering, Federal Research Centre Fundamentals of Biotechnology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation

BACKGROUND: The study aimed to investigate hepatitis C virus (HCV) specific markers in chronically infected children. The main objective was to explore the patterns of marker variability.
METHODS: HCV RNA, core antigen, anti-HCV IgM, and antibodies to individual viral proteins were detected using commercially available assays or experimental ELISA. RNA genotyping and recombination were performed by sequencing.
RESULTS: HCV RNA and core antigen were detected in serum samples of all children (n=100). Anti-HCV IgM, anti-NS4AB IgG, and anti-NS5A IgG were revealed less often than antibodies to core and NS3 proteins. To elucidate the cause of this finding, all subjects were divided into 4 groups differing in hepatitis duration. It was anti-NS4AB only whose detection depended on the infection duration. A trend was established that the longer the hepatitis duration, the more frequently anti-HCV IgM was observed. No significant impact of HCV RNA load and NS4A/NS4B amino acid substitutions on anti-NS4AB IgG detection was found. The increase HCV genotype 3 was observed among children infected after 2000. The earliest case of infection caused by HCV intergenotype recombinant RF1_2k/1b was identified in a child vertically infected in 1997.
CONCLUSIONS: HCV genotypes and subtypes were found to be variable virus specific markers in children infected in 1997-2015. Over the period, there has been a trend to change the dominant HCV subtype and appearance of recombinant RF1_2k/1b in children. Among humoral markers, anti-NS4AB revealing is depended on chronic hepatitis C duration, while for anti-HCV IgM, only a trend was established. The detection of anti-NS4AB can be helpful in assessing the duration of chronic hepatitis C.

KEY WORDS: Child; Hepatitis C; HCV; Genotypes; Antigen; Antibodies; Amino acid substitution