Hepatitis C Replicates In Oral Mucosa

HCV Pathology

Date: 5/21/2001

2001 MAY 21 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- At the 36th annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), held April 18-22, 2001, in Prague, Czech Republic, M. Carrozzo and colleagues at the University of Turin, Italy, reported that they've detected replication of the hepatitis C virus in the oral mucosa.

They suspect the virus may play a role in development of oral lesions in infected patients, but how it does this, if it does, is still not clear.

The Carrozzo et al. study was titled "Molecular evidence that the hepatitis c virus replicates in the oral mucosa." According to their EASL conference abstract:

"Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has been associated with a variety of extrahepatic manifestations, including oral lichen planus, and recent in situ hybridization data suggests that HCV may replicate in the oral mucosa.

"We collected oral mucosa biopsy specimens from 11 anti-HCV-positive patients with histologically confirmed oral lichen (reticular: six cases; erosive: three cases; and reticular-atrophic: two cases). All had HCV RNA in serum (nine were genotype 1b and two 2a/2c), and seven had circulating cryoglobulins.

"Total mucosa RNA was extracted and analyzed for presence and titer of HCV RNA of both strands (genomic and negative strand). In HCV RNA-positive specimens we further analyzed the HCV sequence encompassing base positions 1296-1603 at the N-terminal portion of the E2-encoding region, which includes the hypervariable region 1. Oral- and serum-derived consensus sequences, obtained by direct sequencing of the polymerase chain reaction amplification product, were aligned with the MultAlin algorithm.

"Genomic- and negative-strand HCV RNA was detected in nine (82%) and four (36.4%) specimens, respectively, and independently of the genotype, serum viral load, and diagnosis of liver or oral mucosa disease. Sequence analyses available from four additional patients showed that oral- and serum-derived sequences differed by an average of 4.25% of amino acids (range 2.3% - 5.2%), suggesting a compartmentalization of HCV in the oral mucosa, although we were not able to identify any oral mucosa-specific sequence."

Carrozzo et al. concluded that their study "results indicate that HCV may persist and replicate in diseased oral mucosa, suggesting a pathological role for HCV in these lesions, although the mechanisms are unclear."

M. Carrozzo and co-authors are in the Department of Oral Medicine, University of Turin, Italy.

This article was prepared by Hepatitis Weekly editors from staff and other reports.