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This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Rights and Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via CrossRef Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Muñoz, S. J. Articles by Liang, T. J. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Muñoz, S. J. Articles by Liang, T. J. Related Collections Transfusion Medicine Social Bookmarking                   What's this?  Previous Article  |  Table of Contents  |  Next Article  Blood, Vol. 94 No. 4 (August 15), 1999: pp. 1460-1464 The Significance of Hepatitis G Virus in Serum of Patients With Sporadic Fulminant and Subfulminant Hepatitis of Unknown Etiology Santiago J. Muñoz, Harvey J. Alter, Yoshiyuki Nakatsuji, James W.-K. Shih, Rajender K. Reddy, Lennox Jeffers, Eugene R. Schiff, Andrea E. Reid, Aldo Marrone, Kenneth Rothstein, Cosme Manzarbeitia, and T. Jake Liang From the Center for Liver Diseases, Albert Einstein Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA; the Department of Transfusion Medicine and Clinical Center, Liver Diseases Section, NIDDK, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD; the Gastrointestinal Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA; and the Center for Liver Diseases, University of Miami, Miami, FL. Excluding acute hepatic failure caused by drugs, the etiology of fulminant hepatitis (FH) remains unknown in many patients. There are conflicting data about a possible pathogenic role for the hepatitis G virus (HGV) in patients with cryptogenic fulminant hepatitis (non-A-E FH). We investigated the presence of circulating HGV in 36 patients with well-documented non-A-E fulminant and 5 patients with subfulminant hepatitis from 3 geographic locations in the United States. Serum HGV RNA was determined by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction using primers from the NS5 region of the HGV genome. HGV RNA was also measured before and after liver transplantation in 5 patients and at different time points in 7 patients. Serum samples were recoded and reanalyzed for HGV RNA using different primer sets to assess the validity of the HGV RNA assay. HGV was present in serum of 14 of the 36 patients (38.8%) with non-A-E fulminant hepatitis. Twenty percent of patients from the Northeast, 11% of the patients from the Southeast, and 50% from the Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States had circulating HGV RNA. The use of therapeutic blood products was significantly associated with the presence of serum HGV RNA (P < .02). Retesting for HGV RNA with different primers was positive in all but 1 case. HGV RNA is not causally related to non-A-E fulminant hepatitis. The finding of HGV RNA in serum from these patients is likely related to the administration of blood product transfusion after the onset of fulminant hepatitis. CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this? This article has been cited by other articles: D Kelly and S Skidmore Hepatitis C-Z: recent advances Arch. Dis. Child., May 1, 2002; 86(5): 339 - 343. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

	Copyright © 1999 by American Society of Hematology         Online ISSN: 1528-0020