Influence of quasispecies on virological responses and disease severity in patients with chronic hepatitis C

Figure 1 Representative autoradiograph of SSCP analysis of HCV RNA-positive samples showing the development of quasispecies in samples 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16 and 17.

Figure 2 Patients with chronic active hepatitis, cirrhosis and HCC with different degrees of quasispecies with variations in the HVR and NS5B genes of HCV, observed by SSCP.

Figure 3 Virological responses in patients with different degrees of quasispecies with variations in the HVR and NS5B genes of HCV, observed by SSCP.

Figure 4 Viral load (mean ± SD) at different phases during 48 wk of therapy in patients grouped on the basis of the number of bands observed in the selected region. A: Viral kinetics of patients grouped on the basis of quasispecies in the HVR region (CQS-13, SQS-14, NQS-14); B: Viral kinetics of the patients grouped on the basis of quasispecies in the NS5B region (CQS-6, SQS-9, NQS-26) by SSCP analysis.

Figure 5 Phylogenetic analysis of the 18 (7 NR and 11 SVR) patients infected with HCV of genotype 3 by the neighbor-joining method in order to draw a distance matrix of the sequences. A: HVR, the accession numbers of the HVR genes in patients 1-18 are EF015726 to EF015743 in order; B: NS5B region, the accession numbers of the NS5B regions in patients 1-18 are EF015699 to EF015716 in order.

Figure 6 Phylogenetic analysis of the 5 (4 NR and 1 SVR) patients infected with HCV of genotype 1 by the neighbor-joining method, in order to draw a distance matrix of the sequences. A: HVR, the accession numbers of the HVR gene in patients 1-5 are EF015744 to EF015748 in order; B: NS5B region, the accession numbers of the NS5B region in patients 1-5 are EF015721 to EF015725 in order.