Lack of association between interleukin 28B polymorphisms and spontaneous viral clearance in hepatitis B virus patients.

TO THE EDITOR—We read the article by Seto et al [1] with interest. The authors investigated the correlation of HLA-DP and interleukin 28B (IL-28B) polymorphisms with hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) seroclearance in hepatitis B virus (HBV) patients, and found that IL-28B haplotype CG (rs12979860/rs8099917) was associated with HBsAg clearance. The role of IL-28B polymorphisms in HBV has been increasingly explored, but till now only conflicting results have been achieved. Recently we reviewed current studies delving into IL-28B and spontaneous HBV clearance and searched databases including PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure using the terms interleukin 28B and hepatitis B through 1 March 2013. In total, 145 articles were searched. After preliminary screening, 9 articles in English and 1 in Chinese investigating the association between IL-28B and HBV seroclearance were encompassed. Among them, 1 article obscured the genotype distributions and was omitted from our analysis [2], and 1 with virus clearance after interferon treatment was excluded [3] as well. Therefore, 8 studies in which genotype distributions of IL-28B were shown or could be figured out were included ultimately (7 studies involving rs12979860, 3 involving rs8099917, and 2 involving rs12980275, most of which were conducted in Asians; see Supplementary Table 1). We analyzed the correlation between IL-28B polymorphisms and HBV seroclearance through meta-analysis in a recessive model and allele model. For rs12979860, 1380 patients with persistent hepatitis B and 1305 controls with spontaneous HBV seroclearance were