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Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Oct 14, 2015; 21(38): 10790-10810
Published online Oct 14, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i38.10790
Epidemiology of hepatitis C virus in Iran
Reza Taherkhani, Fatemeh Farshadpour
Reza Taherkhani, Fatemeh Farshadpour, Department of Microbiology and Parasitology, School of Medicine, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr 7514633341, Iran
Reza Taherkhani, Persian Gulf Biomedical Research Center, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr 7514633341, Iran
Fatemeh Farshadpour, Persian Gulf Tropical Medicine Research Center, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr 7514633341, Iran
Author contributions: Taherkhani R and Farshadpour F solely contributed to this paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare there are no conflicts of interest in the content of this review.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Fatemeh Farshadpour, PhD, Department of Microbiology and Parasitology, School of Medicine, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Moallem Street, PO Box 3631, Bushehr 7514633341, Iran. f.farshadpour@yahoo.com
Telephone: +98-9171712653 Fax: +98-7714550235
Received: March 27, 2015
Peer-review started: March 28, 2015
First decision: April 24, 2015
Revised: May 20, 2015
Accepted: August 31, 2015
Article in press: August 31, 2015
Published online: October 14, 2015
Processing time: 200 Days and 13 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The distribution patterns of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection are related to different status of public health and the presence of risk factors in the society. In Iran, the predominance of risk factors for transmission of HCV has changed from blood transfusion to intravenous drug use; and due to the growth in the number of injecting drug users, the prevalence of HCV infection is rising in the country. Even the recent changes in the distribution pattern of HCV genotypes confirm this issue. Overall, the epidemiology of HCV is changing in Iran. Therefore, this review was conducted to present a clear view about current epidemiology of HCV in Iran.