Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece; Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Garyfallia Stefanou
Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Ioannis Mamais
Department of Health Sciences, School of Sciences, European University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
Konstantinos Angelis
Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Angelos Hatzakis
Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Anna Kramvis
Hepatitis Virus Diversity Research Unit, Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Health Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection constitutes a global public health problem. In order to establish how HBV was disseminated across different geographic regions, we estimated the levels of regional clustering for genotypes D and A. We used 916 HBV-D and 493 HBV-A full-length sequences to reconstruct their global phylogeny. Phylogeographic analysis was conducted by the reconstruction of ancestral states using the criterion of parsimony. The putative origin of genotype D was in North Africa/Middle East. HBV-D sequences form low levels of regional clustering for the Middle East and Southern Europe. In contrast, HBV-A sequences form two major clusters, the first including sequences mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, and the second including sequences mostly from Western and Central Europe. Conclusion: We observed considerable differences in the global dissemination patterns of HBV-D and HBV-A and different levels of monophyletic clustering in relation to the regions of prevalence of each genotype.
