Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Time And Mode Of Epidemic Hcv-2 Subtypes Dispersal In Europe: Phylodynamics Of Hcv-2c In Italy And Albania

Erika Ebranati
,
Alessandro Mancon
,
Martina Airoldi
,
Silvia Renica
,
Renata Shkjezi
,
Pranvera Dragusha
,
Carla Della Ventura
,
Anna Rita Ciccaglione
,
Massimo Ciccozzi
,
Silvia Bino
,
Elisabetta Tanzi
ORCID logo ,
Valeria Micheli
ORCID logo ,
Elisabetta Riva
,
Massimo Galli
,
Gianguglielmo Zehender
*
Version 1 : Received: 7 January 2021 / Approved: 11 January 2021 / Online: 11 January 2021 (13:10:30 CET)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Ebranati, E.; Mancon, A.; Airoldi, M.; Renica, S.; Shkjezi, R.; Dragusha, P.; Della Ventura, C.; Ciccaglione, A.R.; Ciccozzi, M.; Bino, S.; Tanzi, E.; Micheli, V.; Riva, E.; Galli, M.; Zehender, G. Time and Mode of Epidemic HCV-2 Subtypes Spreading in Europe: Phylodynamics in Italy and Albania. Diagnostics 2021, 11, 327. Ebranati, E.; Mancon, A.; Airoldi, M.; Renica, S.; Shkjezi, R.; Dragusha, P.; Della Ventura, C.; Ciccaglione, A.R.; Ciccozzi, M.; Bino, S.; Tanzi, E.; Micheli, V.; Riva, E.; Galli, M.; Zehender, G. Time and Mode of Epidemic HCV-2 Subtypes Spreading in Europe: Phylodynamics in Italy and Albania. Diagnostics 2021, 11, 327.

Abstract

Newly characterising 245 Italian and Albanian HCV-2 NS5B sequences collected between 2001 and 2016 was used to reconstruct the origin and dispersion pathways of HCV-2c. The tree of a subset of these sequences aligned with 247 publicly available sequences was reconstructed in spatio-temporal scale using the Bayesian approach, and the effective replication number (Re) was estimated using the birth-death model. Our findings show that HCV-2c was the most prevalent subtype in Italy and Albania, and that GT2 originated in Guinea Bissau in the XVI century and spread to Europe in the XX century. The HCV-2c subtype had two internal nodes respectively dating back to the 1930s and 1950s having as most probable locations Ghana and Italy, respectively. Phylodynamic analysis revealed an exponential increase in the effective number of infections and Re in both Italy between the 1950s and 1980s, and Albania between the 1990s and the early 2000s. It seems very likely that HCV-2c reached Italy from Africa at the time of the second Italian colonisation (1936-1941), but did not reach Albania until the period of dramatic migration to Italy in the 1990s.

Keywords

epidemiological history of HCV-2; HCV-2 subtypes; evolutionary demography of HCV-2; phylodynamics of HCV-2 in Italy and Albania; HCV-2 Re estimation

Subject

Biology and Life Sciences, Virology

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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