Molecular and immunological study of genotype 2 Hepatitis C virus infection in chronically infected and recovered blood donors

Recovery from Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is considered infrequent (p = 0.0053). The dominance of genotype 2 HCV strains and high frequency of HLAA-B*57 may be important factors explaining the high rate of recovery from HCV infection in Ghana. The second objective of this project was to assess the antigenicity of the recombinant genotype 2 F protein in donors with either chronic infection or recovery identified previously. Purified F and core proteins were used to develop immunoassays to detect anti-F and anti-core in titrated plasma samples. The level of HCV antibodies was also titrated using a commercial anti-HCV kit. The results showed that the reactivity of F protein was significantly higher (p