oestrogen therapy and protection from death from ischaemic heart disease. CH. A prospective study of postmenopausal estrogen therapy and coronary heart disease. Regulation of prosta-cyclin and thromboxane production by human umbilical vessels, the effect of estradiol and progesterone in a superfusion model. Prostaglandins Leukotrienes Med 1982;85:115. 31 Dyken ML, Wolf PA, Barnett HJM, et al. R...

BACKGROUND & AIMS About 350-400 million people are infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV) chronically and 1 million people die of hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related liver diseases. Nucleos(t)ide analogues (NAs) have been used for the treatment against HBV. However, few studies have investigated the long-term effects of different nucleos(t)ide analogues on levels of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsA...

BACKGROUND Kinetics of serum hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) level in hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-negative chronic hepatitis B patients presented with severe reactivation and received oral antiviral therapy is unknown. We aimed to investigate the kinetics of HBsAg level among these patients. METHODS HBeAg-negative patients on antiviral therapy with follow-up for 2 years were studied. Th...

BACKGROUND Interferon alpha (IFNα) therapy has been widely used in the treatment of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) for decades. Nucleos(t)ide analogues are also increasingly used to treat CHB recently. More and more studies are being carried out concerning the clearance or seroconversion of HBsAg, which is recognized as an ideal goal of CHB therapy. This study conducted a meta-analysis to estimate t...

From 1982 to 1989, pregnant women in two large city hospitals in The Netherlands had serum samples screened for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg). Infants of mothers found to be HBsAg-positive received hepatitis B immune globulin immediately after birth and hepatitis B vaccine in the first year of life. Blood samples of infants were regularly tested for HBsAg and antibodies directed against H...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Occult HBV infection can persist following HBsAg loss and be transmitted, but the virological features are not well defined. METHODS Here we investigated 25 Korean patients who lost HBsAg during follow up, either spontaneously or subsequent to therapy. RESULTS Whereas subtype adr (genotype C) was found in 96% of HBsAg positive patients, 75 % of patients who lost HBsAg sponta...

PURPOSE HBsAg-positive kidney recipients are at increased risk for mortality and graft failure. The aims of this study were to identify the outcomes of HBsAg-positive recipients who received preemptive antiviral agents after successful kidney transplantation and to analyze risk factors for HBV reactivation. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 944 patients performed kidn...

The performance of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) screening assays is continuously improved to reduce the risk of transfusion-associated hepatitis B. In this study, a semiautomated immune complex transfer chemiluminescence enzyme immunoassay (ICT-CLEIA) for the detection of HBsAg, which is as sensitive as hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA PCR, was developed; the ICT-CLEIA assay performance was c...

The profit to be gained by testing Danish blood donors for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) with a third generation technique instead of the currently used immunoelectrophoresis was investigated by additional screening of 48 750 blood units by radioimmunoassay three weeks after donation. Twenty nine units were positive for HBsAg on radioimmunoassay (0.059%). Only six of these were found by i...

In a cross-sectional study, 200 subjects attending the Association for Reproductive Family and Health (AFRH) Centre in Ibadan, Nigeria were screened randomly to determine the prevalence of HbsAg among them, using conventional methods. The study showed that the prevalence of HBsAg was 7.0% (n=14). The seroprevalence of HBsAg was higher in males [5(10.2%)] than in their female counterparts [9(5.9...