title: Genetic evolution of HCV quasispecies in patients  with cholestatic hepatitis after liver transplantation
design: The aim of this study was to analyze HCV quasispecies in patients with cholestatic hepatitis C (compared to a control group) by deep pyrosequencing. To this end, we included 22 HCV-infected patients undergoing liver transplantation: 13 patients with a diagnosis of cholestatic hepatitis C and 9 patients with mild hepatitis C recurrence (control group). Two serum samples were collected from each patient: one sample obtained at the time of LT and another sample obtained between 1 and 3 months after LT at the time of diagnosis of acute hepatitis. We amplified a 340-nucleotide (nt) fragment of the NS5B region (nt 8279 to 8618, according to isolate H77, accession number AF009606). Deep pyrosequencing was performed using the 454/GS-Junior platform.