Different Constitution of Hepatitis C Virus Population in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells and Plasma in Patients with Type C Chronic Liver Disease

We searched for the presence of the plus orminus strand of hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA inperipheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from threepatients with chronic HCV infection using thestrand-specific reverse transcription and polymerase chainreaction (RT-PCR) method. To examine whether the HCVpopulation of PBMCs differs from that of plasma, asequence of the hypervariable region (HVR) in the E2/NS1 region was analyzed. All three patients hadboth plus and minus strands of HCV RNA in their PBMCs.Sequence study revealed that the HCV population in PBMCswas homogenous in all patients, while that in plasma was composed of two main clones. One ofthese had the same sequence as the clones seen in PBMCs,except for one patient. Our results suggest that PBMCsrepresent one of the extrahepatic replication sites of HCV and that tissue tropism isexpressed by some of the HCV population.