Detection of circulating HCV recombinant form RF1_2k/1b in blood serum of patients by real-time RT-PCR.

Globally, about 70 million people are infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV), and about 400 thousand people die annually from chronic hepatitis C complications. The management of patients with chronic hepatitis C may require HCV genotyping, since the efficiency of some widely used antiviral drugs strongly depend on the viral genotype and/or subtype. The most prevalent HCV circulating recombinant form, RF1_2k/1b, is misclassified as genotype 2 by many commercial HCV genotyping kits, based on the RT-PCR analysis of the 5' untranslated region of the HCV genome.