Rapid detection of genotypes and mutations in the pre-core promoter and the pre-core region of hepatitis B virus genome: correlation with viral persistence and disease severity
Section snippets
Patients
We studied a cohort of 151 consecutive French patients who were referred to our liver department (Hôtel-Dieu Hospital, Lyon, France) for the management of compensated chronic hepatitis B from 1994 to 1997. All patients had liver biopsy-proven chronic hepatitis B. At the time of referral, none of the patients had clinical manifestation of decompensation of the liver disease, such as jaundice, ascites, variceal bleeding, encephalopathy, or liver carcinoma. None of the patients received
Epidemiological characteristics of the patients
The 151 patients were classified into two groups according to the results of HBeAg/anti-HBe serology. Eighty-five patients were positive for HBeAg and 66 patients were positive for anti-HBe. The demographic characteristics of the patients are presented in detail in Table 1. HBeAg positive patients were younger than those who were anti-HBe positive (p<0.001). There was no statistical difference between the two groups in terms of sex ratio, but a difference was observed in terms of mode of
Discussion
In this study of a large cohort of 151 French patients with ongoing chronic hepatitis B, we found that HBV genotyping can be performed on a large scale using a new post-PCR hybridization assay. This line probe assay was previously set up for HCV genotyping (40) and was applied only very recently to HBV genome detection 33., 36.. This assay was first evaluated blindly with our in-house tests 15., 20., 31. and viral genome sequence analysis that demonstrated its reliability for the rapid
Acknowledgements
We thank Dr Franise Huisse (Chiron diagnostics, France) for providing the branched DNA assay kits. This work was supported by grants form the INSERM and the“Hospices Civils de Lyon”.
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