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...

Abstract Background Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a major concern for blood safety in high-prevalence HBV countries such as China. In Shenzhen, dual hepatitis surface antigen (HBsAg) enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) have been adopted parallel with nucleic acid testing (NAT) donors over decade. A small proportion of test reactive (R) HBsAg but negative through routine NAT, whic...

Mutation in the hepatitis B virus surface antigen (HBsAg) may affect the efficiency of diagnostic immunoassays or success of vaccinations using HBsAg. Thus, antigenicity and immunogenicity analyses of the mutated HBsAg are necessary to develop novel diagnostic tools and efficient vaccinations. Here, the in vitro antigenicity of three wild-type HBsAg open reading frames (ORFs) (adr4, W1S [subtyp...

conclusions: premature stop codon in the s gene was observed in all countries with evaluable hbv genome sequences. co-existence of detectable hepatitis b surface antigen (hbsag) and s gene premature stop codon was inconsistent with other studies. investigations on yield truncated hbsag are suggested to determine if they can affect elisa hbsag results. background: we have previously reported on ...

BACKGROUND About ninety percent of immunocompetent adults recover from hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection within 6 months after transmission. The infection is considered to be terminated if the antibodies (HBsAb) to the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) become detectable and the HBsAg and Hepatitis B virus DNA (HBV DNA,) are no longer perceptible. After recovery from an acute infection, the de...

BACKGROUND The underlying mechanism of HBsAg-negative hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is notoriously difficult to elucidate because of the extremely low DNA levels which define the condition. We used a highly efficient amplification method to overcome this obstacle and achieved our aim which was to identify specific mutations or sequence variations associated with this entity. METHODS A tot...

Background: The leading cause of mutations in the hepatitis B virus (HBV) genome is high rate nucleotide misincorporation during reverse transcription. Most were found within “a” determinant S gene’s major hydrophilic region (MHR). They resulted escape mutants due to amino acid changes MHR. However, outside MHR can also trigger mutants. Objectives: This study focused on further molecular studie...

Despite several studies regarding the correlation between serum HBsAg titers and viral loads, the association remains uncertain. Eighty-nine individuals were selected randomly from a Chinese cohort of 2,258 subjects infected persistently with hepatitis B virus (HBV) for cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis. Viral loads of mutant HBV are lower than those of wild type HBV. The serum HBsAg ti...

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...

conclusions this study indicates that the rate of g1896a mutation at the pc region among hbeag negative patients, in the golestan province of iran, was similar to the average rate encountered in other parts of iran. the pc stop codon mutation was detected in 93.18% of hbeag negative patients. further studies with larger sample sizes are required to elucidate the exact role of these mutations in...