Afsheen Zakir, Saba Khaliq, Shah Jahan, Khalid Pervaiz Lone.
Transcriptome analysis of apoptotic markers in pe- ripheral blood mononuclear cells of HCV genotype-3A infected patients.
J Postgrad Med Inst Jan ;32(02):123-7.

Objective: To examine the HCV genotype 3a specific effects on caspases involved in apoptosis, expression levels of caspases-3, 8, 9, and 10 in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of HCV genotype 3a infected patients. Methodology: This hospital based case controlled study was carried out between May 2014 to March 2015 on 72 subjects (36 HCV cases and 36 healthy controls). Blood samples of already diagnosed HCV patients of genotype 3a who were not on any antiviral therapy and HCV negative controls were collected. After extracting Ribonucleic acid (RNA) from samples it was reverse transcribed into complementary deoxyribonucleic acid (cDNA). Relative gene expression was performed for caspases-3, 8, 9 & 10. Results: Overall alanine transaminase and aspartate transaminase (ALT and AST) were raised, i.e. 85.20 ±40.64 and 97.43 ±2.77 in HCV infected subjects, as compared to controls 54 ±29.5 and 33 ±18.3 respectively (p <0.001). Gene expression analysis exhibited a statistically significant increase of 3.77, 3.74, 4.36 and 2.86 folds of caspases-3, 8, 9 & 10 respectively (p ?0.001) in HCV patients. Conclusion: HCV genotype 3a has the tendency to induce both intrinsic and extrinsic pathways of apoptosis in peripheral blood mononuclear cells, facilitating HCV infection of hepatocytes by inhibiting the cells related to immune system.

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