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©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Oct 27, 2020; 12(10): 775-791
Published online Oct 27, 2020. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v12.i10.775
Published online Oct 27, 2020. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v12.i10.775
Hepatitis B virus detected in paper currencies in a densely populated city of India: A plausible source of horizontal transmission?
Palashpriya Das, Ruchi Supekar, Ritika Chatterjee, Subrata Roy, Anisa Ghosh, Infectious Diseases and Immunology Division, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata PIN-700032, West Bengal, India
Subhajit Biswas, Infectious Diseases & Immunology Division, Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research), Kolkata 700032, West Bengal, India
Author contributions: Biswas S and Das P conceptualized, designed and executed the present work and wrote the manuscript; Supekar R contributed substantially to the virology experiments and in writing of the manuscript; Chatterjee R, Roy S and Ghosh A took part in collecting the samples for this study and also conducted experiments; Das P and Supekar R contributed equally and are joint first authors; all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by Institutional Grant by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology , Kolkata, No. MLP-118
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology Institutional Ethical Committee on Human Subjects and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology Biological Safety Committee. This work involved no use of human subjects or human clinical materials.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Subhajit Biswas, DVSc, PhD, Associate Professor, Senior Researcher, Infectious Diseases & Immunology Division, Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research), 4 Raja S.C. Mullick Road, Jadavpur, Kolkata 700032, West Bengal, India. subhajit.biswas@iicb.res.in
Received: April 27, 2020
Peer-review started: April 27, 2020
First decision: August 9, 2020
Revised: August 18, 2020
Accepted: September 14, 2020
Article in press: September 14, 2020
Published online: October 27, 2020
Peer-review started: April 27, 2020
First decision: August 9, 2020
Revised: August 18, 2020
Accepted: September 14, 2020
Article in press: September 14, 2020
Published online: October 27, 2020
Core Tip
Core Tip: The recent upsurge in hepatitis B virus (HBV) infections in eastern India prompted the search for this virus in low denomination paper notes in this region. Applying saliva on finger tips for enumerating currency notes is a common practice. Thus, paper currencies may be a potential source of “horizontal” HBV transmission, especially if there are cuts/bruises on the oral mucous membrane or skin. We discovered that intact HBV particles are present in about 7.14% of the currencies. Molecular analysis and immunoassays suggested that the circulating HBV are “occult” in nature, hence capable of “silent transmission” in the general population.