Abstract

Background Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is the major cause of liver disease related morbidity and mortality in hemophilic patients who needs regular blood product administration Although genotype of infecting HCV is one of the prime predictors of response to antiviral therapy however its distribution in hemophilic patients is still unclear and just few studies with low sample sizes have investigated this issue Therefore in this study we aimed to identify this distribution in 367 Iranian hemophilic patients Methods Blood samples were received from 367 hemophilic patients with chronic hepatitis C detected during a nationwide screening program who referred to our center for therapeutic measures HCV RNA viral load was detected using Amplicor test (Version 2) Genotyping was performed by genotype specific primers Results HCV genotype distribution was la in 58 3a in 185 1b in 14 7 4 in 1 1 2 in 0 8 and mixed in 6 2 and finally 0 5 of isolates were non-typable Serum liver enzymes were not associated with HCV viral load and genotypes Patients with severe bleeding tendency had significantly lower serum liver enzymes than those with a mild bleeding tendency Conclusion Genotype la followed by 3a and 1b were the most frequently detected HCV genotypes in Iranian hemophilic patients and there was no association between splenomegaly and viral markers and liver enzymes in these patients