methylation pattern of hepatitis b virus x gene in infected patients

objective: a recent field of research in epigenetics is dna methylation which involves the cpg island in the genome that subsequently controls transcription and translation of targeted genes. in the hepatitis b virus (hbv) genome, there are three cpg islands which tend to be methylated. the aim of the current study is to determine the methylation pattern of the hbv x gene in chronically infected hbv patients. methods: study participants comprised 45 chronically infected hbv patients. according to the presence of the hbeag, patients were divided into two groups, hbeag positive (n=24) and hbeag negative (n=21). initially, viral dna was treated with natrium bisulfate. then, analysis was performed with two sets of methylated and non-methylated primers by the msp method. results: the overall methylation rate in serum samples of hepatitis b infected patients was 35.5%; the rate in the hbeag positive patients was 20.8%, whereas it was 52.3% in hbeag negative patients. there was a significantly higher rate of methylation in serum samples of hbeag negative patients compared to hbeag positive patients (student's t-test; p=0.02). conclusion: methylation of hbv can be used as a new mechanism to control the progression of viral infection. this methodology can be useful for determining the characteristics of clinical stages of this infection.