“…In addition, HIV-1 co-infection seems to impact the quasispecies complexity exhibited by HCV. Both an increase and a decrease of quasispecies heterogeneity has been described, when compared to HCV mono-infected patients (Sherman et al, 1996;Toyoda et al, 1997). In spite of the conflicting results, many reports suggest a relatively low level of HCV quasispecies diversity before HAART, and an increase in diversity after prolonged treatment, principally due to a significant increase in both synonymous and non-synonymous substitution rates in the hypervariable region 1 of HCV E2 (Bernini, et al, 2011).…”