HCV Prevalence in Pakistan, An Alarming Situation

HCV disease is among life threatening general medical issues around the world, with more than 170–200 million HCV infected individuals worldwide [1] including around 17 million patients from Pakistan [2]. Liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma is being caused by HCV. 27% of liver cirrhosis and 25% of hepatocellular carcinoma cases are caused mere due to Hepatitis C [3]. Every year Hepatitis C cause around 350,000 individuals to loss their lives [4]. HCV is a RNA virus with a single sense positive strand and belongs to the Flaviviridae family [5]. Hepatitis C encodes for a polyprotein which is made of around 3010 amino acids , the genome of hepatitis C is 9.6 kb [6]. The auxiliary proteins (C, E1, E2, and p7) and nonstructural proteins (NS2, NS3, NS4A, NS4B, NS5A, and NS5B) are created by this polyprotein when it is post translationally handled by viral and cell proteins [7].

November 2, 2019