What is the normal amount of hepatitis C virus?

Don't think that it is abnormal to be detected as a hepatitis C virus. In fact, it is sometimes a normal reaction because the hepatitis C virus will exist to a certain extent. The presence of a small amount is normal. It is a physiological virus that the human body carries. However, if it exceeds or falls below this range, it means that there are toxins and inflammation, which requires treatment and examination as soon as possible.

What is the normal amount of hepatitis C virus?

Experts point out that quantitative testing of HCV RNA is the most direct and effective method for early diagnosis of HCV. In quantitative testing of HCV, the normal value range of HCV is 0-1000 copy/ml, and HCV RNA within this range is negative. If the quantitative test of HCV RNA is greater than 1000 copy/ml, that is, HCV-RNA is positive, it means that the number of viruses in the body is high and the infectiousness is strong, which is the active period of HCV infection.

Morphological culture

HCV virus body is spherical, with a diameter of less than 80nm (36~40nm in liver cells and 36-62nm in blood), and is a single strand.

A positive-strand RNA virus with a lipid-containing envelope surrounding the nucleocapsid and spikes on the envelope. HCV only has three in vitro cell culture systems: Huh7, Huh7.5, and Huh7.5.1. Chimpanzees can be infected with HCV, but the symptoms are mild.

Gene structure

HCV-RNA is composed of approximately 9500-10000 bp, with 5′ and 3′ non-coding regions (NCR) of 319-341 bp and 27-55 bp, respectively, containing several forward and reverse repeat sequences, which may be related to gene replication. Immediately downstream of the 5′ non-coding region is an open reading frame (ORF), in which the genomic arrangement order is 5'-C-E1-E2-p7-NS2-NS3-NS4-NS5-3', which can encode a polyprotein precursor with a length of approximately 3014 amino acids. The latter can be cleaved into 10 viral proteins after the action of host cell and virus self-proteases, including three structural proteins, namely the nucleocapsid protein (also called core protein, Core) with a molecular weight of 19KD and two glycoproteins (E1 protein with a molecular weight of 33KD and E2 protein with a molecular weight of 72Kd). p7 encodes an intrinsic membrane protein, whose function may be an ion channel. The non-structural proteins include NS2, NS3, NS4A, NS5A and NS5B. The non-structural proteins are very important to the life cycle of the virus. NS2 and NS3 have protease activity and are involved in the cleavage of the viral polyprotein precursor. In addition, the NS3 protein also has helicase activity and is involved in unwinding the HCV-RNA molecule to assist RNA replication. The function of NS4 is still unclear. NS5A is a phosphoprotein that can interact with a variety of host cell proteins and plays an important role in viral replication. NS5B has RNA-dependent RNA polymerase activity and is involved in HCV genome replication.

Variability

HCV is highly heterogeneous and variable. Analysis of HCV strains with known complete genome sequences

There are great differences in their nucleotide and amino acid sequences. The degree of variation in different parts of the HCV genome is inconsistent. For example, the 5′-CR is the most conservative, with a homology of 92-100%, while the 3′NCR region has a higher degree of variation. Among the HCV coding genes, the C region is the most conserved, followed by the non-structural (NS) region. The region encoding the envelope protein E2/NS1 has the highest variability and is called the hypervariable region.