Vol. 2 No. 01 (2021)
Articles

A Review of Hepatitis C Virus: Prevalence, Genotype, Risk Factors in Pakistan Last Quarter of Century

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  • Aetsam Bin Masood,
  • Zain Ul Abideen,
  • Salman Anjum,
  • Muhammad Irfan
Aetsam Bin Masood
Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics Laboratory, Biosciences Department, COMSATS University Islamabad, Pakistan
Zain Ul Abideen
Translational Genomics Laboratory, Biosciences Department, COMSATS University Islamabad, Pakistan
Salman Anjum
Translational Genomics Laboratory, Biosciences Department, COMSATS University Islamabad, Pakistan
Muhammad Irfan
Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics Laboratory, Biosciences Department, COMSATS University Islamabad, Pakistan
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38094/jlbsr20140

Published 2021-06-26

Keywords

  • Hepatitis C,
  • Pakistan,
  • Prevalence,
  • Genotypes,
  • Risk factors,
  • Injection,
  • Transfusion
    • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

Masood, A. B., Abideen, Z. U., Anjum, S., & Irfan, M. (2021). A Review of Hepatitis C Virus: Prevalence, Genotype, Risk Factors in Pakistan Last Quarter of Century. Journal of Life and Bio Sciences Research , 2(01), 26 -30. https://doi.org/10.38094/jlbsr20140

Copyright (c) 2021

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Abstract

Hepatitis C virus has infected over 200 million people worldwide and is the most common blood-borne disease. Pakistan has the HCV prevalence rate of over 8%. A literature search has been performed using different keywords in different databases i.e. PubMed, Google Scholar, and NCBI. 6.2% prevalence rate was found in the general population, 4.13% in healthcare workers and a higher prevalence rate was observed in injection drug users and multi transfusion population. Use of injection was very frequent among the Pakistani population, reuse and sharing of syringes have an association with HCV infections. In Pakistan most prevalent genotype of HIV was 3a. Knowledge about HCV and its risk factors also varies with the educational background. Blood donors should be screened for HCV, awareness campaigns about different risk factors should be initiated at the government level, and strict regulation on healthcare waste should be implemented, these might help in preventing its spread to healthy individuals.

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