endemic area of Yakutia, Russia

• Main Authors: Valeria Ivaniushina, Nadjia Radjef, Marfa Alexeeva, Elyanne Gault, Sergei Semenov, Mohammed Salhi, Oleg Kiselev, Paul De Ny
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Yakutia; Siberia
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.334.5597; http://vir.sgmjournals.org/content/82/11/2709.full.pdf

Currently, three genotypes of hepatitis delta virus (HDV) are described. The most common, genotype I, has a worldwide distribution; in contrast, genotype II has been found previously only in Japan and Taiwan, while genotype III is found exclusively in South America. Considering the high prevalence of HDV in Northern Siberia (Russia), restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) was used to analyse HDV genotypes from 29 infected patients living in Yakutia. Of these isolates, 11 were characterized by partial nucleotide sequencing and two isolates were completely sequenced. Phylogenetic inference methods included maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood and distance analyses. A restriction pattern consistent with HDV genotype I was found in 14 samples, while the remaining 15 showed a different restriction pattern, inconsistent with any known genotype. Five Yakutian HDV isolates with the type I restriction pattern were sequenced and confirmed to be affiliated with genotype I, although the phylogenetic results indicate that they were heterogeneous and did not cluster together. Sequencing of eight isolates with the new RFLP pattern revealed that these isolates were most closely related to HDV genotype II. In contrast to HDV Yakutian genotype I sequences, all of these type II sequences formed a well-defined clade on phylogenetic trees. Comparison of clinical presentations during hospitalization between patients