conclusions fulminant hepatitis b is associated with distinct mutational patterns of hbv, underlining that genomic diversity of the virus is an important factor determining its pathogenicity. results the most commonly detected diversities affect regulatory motifs of hbv in the core and s region, indicating that these alterations may convert the virus to an aggressive strain. moreover, mutations...

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is endemic among adults in the U.S. territory of Guam (1,2). Perinatal HBV transmission, which occurs at birth from an infected mother to her newborn infant, is a major mode of HBV transmission and maintains HBV endemicity (3). Approximately 90% of HBV-infected infants will develop chronic HBV infection, and approximately 25% of those will die prematurely from ...

Background: SEN virus (SENV) is the latest virus proposed as a cause of unknown hepatitis cases. Among nine detected genotypes of the virus, genotypes D and H are more frequent in hepatitis cases of unknown origin. The aim of this study was to determine the frequency of SENV-D and SENV-H genotypes in the sera of healthy individuals and hepatitis B and C patients. Methods: Totally, 200 serum sam...

The hepatitis B vaccine is considered to be highly immunogenic and has a good safety profile. In adults, it has a primary non-response rate of 5%-10%. Causes of nonresponse to hepatitis B vaccine include age, sex, obesity smoking. Certain human leucocyte antigen (HLA) phenotypes have been known to be associated with responsiveness to the vaccine, and found to be different in different ethnic gr...

A boy was born to a mother who was a chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) carrier. She was hepatitis Be (HBe) antibody positive and HBe antigen and HBV-DNA negative. The boy had not received hepatitis B vaccine and died from fulminant hepatitis at 3 months of age. This case demonstrates the need to vaccinate babies of HBe antibody positive, HBe antigen negative carriers.

Compliance with and responses to the hepatitis B vaccine were evaluated in remaining quilombo communities in Central Brazil. A total of 708 individuals who were susceptible to hepatitis B virus infection were invited to participate in the hepatitis B vaccination program in eight communities. Although 567 (80%) individuals received the first dose, only 198 (28%) complied with the full vaccinatio...

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) causes acute and chronic hepatitis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Although a preventive vaccine is available, the therapeutic options for chronically infected patients are limited. It has been shown that RNA interference can prevent HBV gene expression and replication in vivo when HBV expression vectors are delivered simultaneously with small interfering RNA (siRNA) or si...

BACKGROUND Most cases of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and subsequent liver diseases can be prevented with universal newborn HBV vaccination. The attitudes of health care workers about HBV vaccination and their willingness to recommend vaccine have been shown to impact HBV vaccination coverage and the prevention of vertical transmission of HBV. The purpose of this study was to ascertain the...

It has been shown previously that measles virus (MV) can be successfully used to express foreign proteins (M. Singh and M. A. Billeter, J. Gen. Virol. 80:101-106, 1998). To develop an inexpensive MV-based vaccine, we generated recombinant MVs that produce structural proteins of hepatitis B virus (HBV). A recombinant virus that expressed the HBV small surface antigen (HBsAg) was analyzed in term...