To study the neutralizing epitopes of influenza B virus Yamagata group strains, two monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) were used to select escape mutants of the virus. mAbs 5H4 and 3A12 were found to react with B/Yamagata group strains in haemagglutination inhibition and neutralization tests; no reactivity with B/Victoria group strains was observed. Most of the mutants reacted poorly to polyclonal fe...

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) presents a risk to patients and staff in renal units. To minimise viral transmission, there are international and UK guidelines recommending HBV immunisation for patients commencing renal replacement therapy (RRT) and HBV surveillance in kidney transplant recipients. We report the case of a 56-year-old male who was immunised against HBV before starting haemodialysis. He ...

There are approximately 33 million individuals with HIV infection worldwide. The majority of infections are in southern Africa where hepatitis B is also known to be endemic. As access to life-saving antiretroviral therapy (ART) increases, the possibility for hepatitis B treatment resistance increases because most ART regimens contain lamivudine. Patients coinfected with HBV are therefore receiv...

Background The clinical outcome of HBV infection is highly heterogeneous which correlates with viral factors such as genotypes, viremia and mutants. Evidences showed that HBV genotypes have a role in prevalence of variants, IFN therapy and disease severity. So far, 10 HBV genotypes (A to J) have been identified with distinct geographical distribution. Hence, knowledge of the genotype infecting ...

Universal infantile hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccination may lead to an increase in vaccine escape variants, which may pose a threat to the long-term success of massive vaccination. To determine the prevalence of occult infections in Korean vaccinated individuals, 87 vaccinated subjects were screened for the presence of HBV DNA using both the nested PCR protocol and the VERSANT HBV DNA 3.0 assay...

BACKGROUND & AIMS Application of nucleoside analogues and hepatitis B immunoglobulin (HBIG) has reduced hepatitis B virus (HBV) recurrence rate after liver transplantation (LT) dramatically. Recent data suggests therapy without HBIG is also effective. We sought to evaluate the necessity of HBIG in prophylaxis of HBV recurrence after LT. METHODS A meta-analysis was performed. PubMed/MEDLINE, W...

Abstract Background: Naturally occurred hepatitis B virus (HBV) with surface mutations in a variety of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients who have received no vaccine or HBIG bearing substitutions in surface protein, have been reported. Objectives: Current knowledge concerning the prevalence of these naturally occurring surface antigen mutations among Iranian carriers is limited. Patients and M...

hepatitis b virus (hbv) is a crucial public health problem with approximately 350 million affected people and a death rate of 0.5 to 1.2 million per year worldwide. it proceeds to end-stage liver diseases including cirrhosis with hepatic decompensation and hepatocellular carcinoma (hcc). pakistan lies in the endemic region with 3% hbv carrier rate in the country. the differences in disease outc...

I read with interest the article “A study of genotype, mutants and nucleotide sequence of HBV in Pakistan” by Mumtaz et al. (1) in your journal. The study revealed a prevalence of 96.2% of genotype D in different areas of Pakistan. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) has been classified into 10 genotypes (based on the intergroup divergence of > 8% to < 17%), with a characteristic geographic distribution th...

OBJECTIVE This study was designed to prospectively evaluate the antiviral responses and evolution of resistance mutations during adefovir (ADV) plus lamivudine (LMV) therapy in patients with entecavir (ETV)-resistant hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. METHODS Twenty chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients who had been receiving ETV for more than 6 months and developed virologic breakthrough due to...