Reasearch - Final - Research Paper Example

In this regard, only blood samples from patients who were diagnosed positive for both tuberculosis and Hepatitis B Virus were considered for this study. Samples were collected from a hospital to facilitate sample collection exercise. As for the Hepatitis B Virus, further analysis that involves specific portions of the genome sequencing was done to classify the virus because it is form this that characterization of the genome could be done. Conclusions were then drawn after the characterization procedure.

Hepatitis B virus is a double stranded DNA virus which exhibits four serotypes (adr, adw, ayr, ayw) and is subdivided into 8 genotypes, A-H. The virus belongs to the species of Orthohepadnavirus in the family Hepadnaviridae. The virus is known to co-infect with either other viruses or other infectious diseases. The virus is contracted through several routes: unprotected penetrative sex, contact of body fluid with infected persons, and blood transfusion from infected persons. Research studies have documented that HBV is more infectious than even HIV and HCV, and this explains its overwhelming prevalence in the world.

Given the genotypic variation of the virus, this study was intended to establish the prevalence of the individual HBV genotypes in tuberculosis endemic areas. Unlike in HIV, the epidemiological prevalence of HBV with reference to the genotypic variation is not known. As stated in the introduction above, the virus (HBV) does exist in association with other know infectious diseases and aggravates the condition of the patients – a situation referred to as co-infection. Surprisingly, the specific genotypes of the HBV in all the cases are not known.

A study in Korea reported that those with chronic HBV infection have the tendency to develop Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (Engels, Cho, and Jee, 2010). The findings of the study indicated that those with chronic HBV