Today, chronic viral hepatitis is considered as a public health problem in the world. Totally, 5% of the world population, especially in Asia and Africa suffer from this problem. The prevalence of acute hepatitis in America is 0.1-0.2 percent, 50% of those with hepatitis C (HCV) and 5-10% of them with hepatitis B (HCV) develop chronic hepatitis. Determining HBV and HCV genotypes is important to...

Although safe and effective vaccines for hepatitis B virus (HBV) have been available for nearly three decades, this virus kills at least 600,000 people annually worldwide and remains the leading global cause of chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Because the HBV reverse transcriptase lacks a proofreading function, many HBV genotypes, subgenotypes, mutants, and recombinan...

BACKGROUND Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a worldwide public health problem. Nine HBV genotypes (A-I) have been already discovered. HBV genotypes are important both in the clinical manifestation of disease and treatment response. Moreover, HBV DNA without HBs (Hepatitis B surface)-antigenemia was detected in some patients with chronic hepatitis (occult hepatitis). There is little informat...

OBJECTIVE Iran has the highest rate of opiate use worldwide. However, most opiate users are not screened for hepatitis virus infections. This study aimed to provide accurate, detailed data on the size of the opiate user population at risk of developing these infections. METHOD This seroprevalence study was conducted in the city of Shiraz, southern Iran. All participants were screened for HBV,...

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) genotypes and subgenotypes may vary in geographical distribution and virological features. Previous investigations, including ours, showed that HBV genotypes B and C were respectively predominant in South and North China, while genotypes A and D were infrequently detected and genotype G was not found. In this study, a novel A/C/G intergenotype was identified in patients ...

BACKGROUND Lamivudine (LMV), as the preferred oral drug for use in treatment of HBV, always results in development of resistance mutations after long-term treatment. In this study we investigated chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients in southern China to determine whether different HBV genotypes affect the incidence of LMV resistance mutations. MATERIAL/METHODS The study recruited 185 CHB patien...

Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) is an infectious agent that causes more than half of the cases of liver disease and cancer in the world. Globally there are around 250 million people chronically infected with this virus. Despite 16% of the cases of liver disease in Central America are caused by HBV, the information regarding its genetic diversity, genotypes and circulation is scarce. The purpose of this...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in Uganda is 10%. Hepatitis B virus genotypes impact on treatment response, rate of spontaneous recovery and progression of chronic HBV infection and hepatocellular carcinoma. There is little information on the HBV genotypic distribution in Uganda. OBJECTIVES To determine HBV genotypes in Uganda. METHODS The MBN clinical laborat...

Introduction and objective: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a member of Hepadnaviridae and a major causative agent of chronic and acute hepatitis, liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Genotype determination of HBV is based on PCR-RFLP and sequencing of genome of the virus. The genotype formation is mainly due to mutations of HBV precore, S, and YMDD (tyrosine-methionine-aspartate-aspartate ...

While the overall prevalence of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in Portugal is around 1%, there are no published studies examining HBV genotypes in this country. This study aimed to survey HBV genotypes in the northern Portugal and to examine the possible associations between genotypes and gender, viral transmission routes, viral markers, viral load, and biochemical tests of liver function. T...