Caracteriza？？o do vírus da hepatite C em pacientes com hepatite cr？nica: genótipos no Estado do Amazonas, Brasil

introduction: in the state of amazonas, data regarding the prevalence of different genotypes of hepatitis c virus remains scarce. methods: the genotype of 69 hcv positive patients was determined. an in-house standardized nested-pcr was used to detect hcv rna. genotype assignment was based on type-specific motifs on the sequenced amplicons delimited by primers hc11/hc18 from the 5' untranslated region. results: of the 69 patients studied, 65.2% were male and 34.8% were female. genotype 1 showed the greatest prevalence, followed by 3 and 2. conclusions: these data suggesting that manaus is the point of arrival of hcv in the state of amazonas.