The aim of this study was to estimate distant results after discontinuation of long term lamivudine treatment in children with chronic hepatitis B. Furthermore, the emergence of HBV polymerase gene variants in YMDD motif during therapy was examined. Additionally, the most commonly occurring type of mutation in the polymerase YMDD region were investigated. The study involved 27 HBeAg positive ch...

Lamivudine, a nucleoside analogue, has been used widely as an effective antiviral agent for the treatment of patients with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. However, the YMDD motif mutation of HBV polymerase resistant to lamivudine occurs very frequently after long term therapy. We developed an oligonucleotide chip for the detection of YMDD motif mutants resistant to lamivudine and inv...

BACKGROUND Long-term antiviral therapy, although effective for treatment of hepatitis B, might select the emergence of drug-resistant hepatitis B virus (HBV) mutants. Detection of HBV mutants and determination of viral titre are two crucial parameters for monitoring treatment response and occurrence of mutants. In this study, we take lamivudine resistance as an example to develop a method that ...

Objective: To determine the response to pegylated interferon-α treatment of HBeAgpositive hepatitis B patients with proven lamivudine resistance. Methods: Sixteen HBeAg-positive HBV patients with YMDD mutations were treated with pegylated interferon. Median treatment duration was 52 weeks (range 20–53), with a 26-week follow up. Results: Two of 16 (12.5%) patients seroconverted to HBeAg negativ...

Disappearance of hepatitis B surface antigens (HBsAg) in chronic hepatitis B usually indicates clearance of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. However, false HBsAg negativity with mutations in pre-S2 and 'a' determinant has been reported. It is also known that YMDD mutations decrease the production of HBV and escape detection of serum HBsAg. Here, we report overlapping gene mutations in a patie...

PURPOSE The object of the study was the usefulness of sFas and sFasL concentration in the prognosis of disease development in healthy HBsAg carriers. PATIENTS 34 healthy HBsAg carriers were examined over a three-years period. MATERIAL AND METHODS HBV-DNA was extracted using the Gene Elute Mammalian Genomic DNA Miniprep Kit (Sigma, USA). HBV-DNA concentration and YMDD mutations were measured...

Although the drug-induced mutations of HBV have been ever documented, the evolutionary mechanism is still obscure. To deeply reveal molecular characters of HBV evolution under the special condition, here we made a comprehensive investigation of the molecular variation of the 3432 wild-type sequences and 439 YMDD variants from HBV genotype A, B, C and D, and evaluated the co-variant patterns and...