Assays can perform differently by genotype and

Assays can perform differently by UNC0379 and under-quantification of HCV GTs has been seen with HCV assays [8], [9], [10], [11]. Under-quantification of GT4 has been reported in some early studies of the VERIS Assay [7], [12] where a bias greater than −0.5 log10IU/mL was seen. In two more recent evaluations, under-quantification of GT4 with the VERIS Assay was not seen [13], [14]. Performance of the VERIS Assay with HCV GT4 needs further investigation. Concordance analysis showed overall concordance for VERIS Assay and COBAS Test (98%) and RealTime Assay (95%). Analysis showed the tendency for the VERIS Assay returning ND versus comparator returning a detectable (ases sample turn-around-time and decreases the technician's hands-on-time, freeing them to perform other laboratory duties.
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Introduction Guangdong Province, located on the southern coast, is one of the most developed provinces in China and has the largest population and the highest population density. Moreover, the transient population accounts for 17% of the total population. The number of annually reported cases of hepatitis C in Guangdong Province has been increasing for several years since 2005. For this reason Guangdong Province was ranked top for the most number of hepatitis C cases in China in 2017 (Fu et al., 2015) Owing to the lack of epidemiological information for reported hepatitis C cases, it is impossible to understand the hepatitis C virus (HCV) incidence in different groups in Guangdong. However, information regarding drug users (DU) from DU sentinel surveillance sites was available. According to a report in 2016, the average Anti-HCV positive rate in DU in Guangdong Province was 46.51% (Huang et al., 2016), which was much higher than the HCV infection rate in Chinese blood donors (0.34%) (Fu et al., 2010) and in the general population of Guangdong Province (2.25%) (Luo et al., 2005). Due to the lack of large-scale HCV molecular epidemiological studies, the distribution of HCV subtypes is not yet clear. Studies found that the main subtypes of clinical patients in Guangdong Province were 1b, 6a, and 2a (Huang et al., 2018; Yuan et al., 2017) while 1b, 6a, 3b were common in blood donors (Rong et al., 2014). The most common subtypes in DU were found to be 6a, 3a, 3b or 6a, 3a, and 1b (Chen et al., 2011; Kuang et al., 2015). Interestingly, 1b is the main subtype in the general population of Guangdong Province while 6a is the main subtype among DU. However, previous studies had their limitations and they do not reveal any insight into the subtype distribution of non-injecting drug users (NIDU). In this study, we systematically sampled the DU in the DU sentinel surveillance sites across the province. We estimated the distribution of HCV subtypes in the DU in Guangdong using the subtypes of the 1074 archived samples combined with their epidemiological information in the prefecture-level cities in Guangdong. The subtypes and the epidemiology of injecting drug users (IDU) and NIDU were also compared. Our results provide a comprehensive dataset reflecting the characteristics and diversity of HCV in DU in Guangdong.