ArticleBMC biology2013
Molecular evolution in court: analysis of a large hepatitis C virus outbreak from an evolving source.
Article in BMC biology, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 71 citations in OpenAlex.
- [Advances in the Application of Forensic Microbiome Analysis in Tissue Source Inference].Sichuan da xue xue bao. Yi xue ban = Journal of Sichuan University. Medical science edition · 2025Pooled it
- A healthcare-associated outbreak of hepatitis C virus infections attributable to tampering injectable anaesthetic opioids, South Germany, 2017-2018.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Inferring Viral Transmission Time from Phylogenies for Known Transmission Pairs.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Inferring viral transmission time from phylogenies for known transmission pairs.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Analysis Comparison for Rapid Identification of Pathogenic Virus from Infected Tissue Samples.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Convex hulls in hamming space enable efficient search for similarity and clustering of genomic sequences.BMC bioinformatics · 2020Article
- Biowarfare, bioterrorism and biocrime: A historical overview on microbial harmful applications.Forensic science international · 2020Review
- Rapid detection of pathogenic virus genome sequence from throat and nasal swab samples using an exhaustive gene amplification method.Forensic science, medicine, and pathology · 2019Article
- Microbial forensics: new breakthroughs and future prospects.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2018Review
- Expert consensus statement on the science of HIV in the context of criminal law.Journal of the International AIDS Society · 2018Article
- Increasing the reach of forensic genetics with massively parallel sequencing.Forensic science, medicine, and pathology · 2017Review
- Forensic genetics and genomics: Much more than just a human affair.PLoS genetics · 2017Review
- Article
- Integrating molecular epidemiology and social network analysis to study infectious diseases: Towards a socio-molecular era for public health.Infection, genetics and evolution : journal of molecular epidemiology and evolutionary genetics in infectious diseases · 2016Review
- Expansion of Microbial Forensics.Journal of clinical microbiology · 2016Review
- Accurate Genetic Detection of Hepatitis C Virus Transmissions in Outbreak Settings.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2016Article
- Article
- The evolutionary patterns of hepatitis C virus subtype 2a and 6a isolates linked to an outbreak in China in 2012.Virology · 2015Article
- Advanced molecular surveillance of hepatitis C virus.Viruses · 2015Review
- The Influence of Hepatitis C Virus Genetic Region on Phylogenetic Clustering Analysis.PloS one · 2015Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMolecular phylogenetic analyses are used increasingly in the epidemiological investigation of outbreaks and transmission cases involving rapidly evolving RNA viruses. Here, we present the results of such an analysis that contributed to the conviction of an anesthetist as being responsible for the infection of 275 of his patients with hepatitis C virus.
resultsWe obtained sequences of the NS5B and E1-E2 regions in the viral genome for 322 patients suspected to have been infected by the doctor, and for 44 local, unrelated controls. The analysis of 4,184 cloned sequences of the E1-E2 region allowed us to exclude 47 patients from the outbreak. A subset of patients had known dates of infection. We used these data to calibrate a relaxed molecular clock and to determine a rough estimate of the time of infection for each patient. A similar analysis led to an estimate for the time of infection of the source. The date turned out to be 10 years before the detection of the outbreak. The number of patients infected was small at first, but it increased substantially in the months before the detection of the outbreak.
conclusionsWe have developed a procedure to integrate molecular phylogenetic reconstructions of rapidly evolving viral populations into a forensic setting adequate for molecular epidemiological analysis of outbreaks and transmission events. We applied this procedure to a large outbreak of hepatitis C virus caused by a single source and the results obtained played a key role in the trial that led to the conviction of the suspected source.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.