Prevalence of Hepatitis G Virus (Hgv) in High-Risk Groups and Blood Donors in Tehran,Iran

The hepatitis g virus (hgv) is a newly discovered rna virus, which is associated with acute or chronic hepatitis. a survey was conducted in thalassemic patients, intravenous drug users (ivdu) and blood donors aiming to investigate the prevalence of hepatitis g virus (hgv) infection in these groups in tehran. the presence of hgv rna in these populations was determined using reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (rt-pcr) of the 5’ non-coding region (ncr) of the virus.one percent of blood donors, 12.9% of thalassemics and 8.8% of the ivdus, were infected with hgv. twenty-five percent of hgv positive cases were also positive for hcv and none were positive for hbv-dna. the greatest proportion of hcv positive cases were seen in ivdu group (67.4%) being the only hiv positive group (8.8%). in conclusion our study showed that hgv infection occurs with relatively intermediate frequency among thalassemics and ivdus in iran and a higher rateof hgv-rna was observed in older ivdus.