Analysis of CCR5-Delta 32 and CCR2-V64I polymorphisms in a cohort of Spanish HCV patients using real-time polymerase chain reaction and fluorescence resonance energy transfer technologies.

Nowadays it is clear that chemokine-chemokine receptor interactions are important in chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. The objective of the present study was to elucidate the involvement of the CCR5-Delta 32 and CCR2-V64I polymorphisms in the response to the HCV infection, as well as in the histological damage and the outcome of the infection. A cohort of 139 patients with hepatitis C and 100 healthy blood donors were analysed for both polymorphisms using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and LightCycler technology. We have detected the CCR5-Delta 32 allele in 15 of 278 HCV chromosomes (5.4%) and 15 of 200 control chromosomes (7.5%). The CCR2-V64I allele was present in 24 of 278 HCV chromosomes (8.6%) and 19 of 200 control chromosomes (9.5%). Analysis of the histological parameters showed no statistical significance when comparing the patients carrying the variants vs the cases with the wild-type allele. Our results seem to indicate that the CCR5-Delta 32 and CCR2-V64I polymorphisms are not related to the response to HCV infection, histological damage and outcome of infection in our cohort of Spanish HCV patients.