Hepatitis C virus genotype 1 infection: Prevalence of NS5A and NS5B resistance‐associated substitutions in naïve patients from Argentina

GARCÍA, GABRIEL; PÉREZ, PAULA S; FLICHMAN, DIEGO; GARCÍA, GABRIEL; PÉREZ, PAULA S; FLICHMAN, DIEGO; RIDRUEJO, EZEQUIEL; PERESON, MATÍAS J; DI LELLO, FEDERICO A; RIDRUEJO, EZEQUIEL; PERESON, MATÍAS J; DI LELLO, FEDERICO A; MARTÍNEZ, ALFREDO P; CULASSO, ANDRÉS CA; NEUKAM, KARIN; MARTÍNEZ, ALFREDO P; CULASSO, ANDRÉS CA; NEUKAM, KARIN

JOURNAL OF MEDICAL VIROLOGY

WILEY-LISS, DIV JOHN WILEY & SONS INC

Lugar: New York; Año: 2019

0146-6615

Background: Direct acting antiviral (DAA) therapyagainst Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) increases sustained virologic response rates. Nevertheless,drug resistance has occasionally been associated to failure to DAA. However, isvery scarce the information about the prevalence of NS5A and NS5B resistance-associated substitutions (RASs) in Argentina. Inthis study we determine the prevalence of NS5A and NS5B resistances totreatment in Argentinean DAA treatment-naïve patients chronically infected with  genotype 1 (HCV-1).Methods: In this retrospective cross-sectional study,108 HCV-1-infected patients were studied. RASs in NS5A and NS5B were analyzedby Sanger at baseline and phylogenetic analysis was performed. Results: NS5A and NS5B RASs were detected in 25.8% and6.3% of the analyzed sequences, respectively. The most frequent primary RASsfor NS5A were L31M (7.5%) and Y93H (3.2%) and for NS5B was L159F (3.8%). Noassociation between the presence of RASs and the outcome of DAA treatment wasfound in this study. Adittionally, most of the Argentinean samples were randomly distributedamong sequences around the world in the phylogenetic analysis. Only one significant Argentinean clusterwas observed in both regions but without any particular RASs pattern.Conclusions: Baseline RASsin NS5A and NS5B were frequently observed in HCV-1-infected patients from BuenosAires, Argentina but not related to treatment outcome. No clusters related withRASs transmission were observed in the phylogenetic analysis. The frequency of RASs detected inthis study supports the need for more molecular epidemiology studies on RASs inorder to adjust local treatment guidelines with the incorporation ofautochthonous data.