Prospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 14, 2015; 21(18): 5668-5676
Published online May 14, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i18.5668
Models for predicting hepatitis B e antigen seroconversion in response to interferon-α in chronic hepatitis B patients
Chang-Tai Wang, Ya-Fei Zhang, Bing-Hu Sun, Yu Dai, Hui-Lan Zhu, Yuan-Hong Xu, Meng-Ji Lu, Dong-Liang Yang, Xu Li, Zhen-Hua Zhang
Chang-Tai Wang, Ya-Fei Zhang, Bing-Hu Sun, Yu Dai, Hui-Lan Zhu, Xu Li, Zhen-Hua Zhang, Department of Infectious Diseases, the First Affiliated Hospital, Anhui Medical University, Hefei 230022, Anhui Province, China
Yuan-Hong Xu, Department of Clinical Laboratory, the First Affiliated Hospital, Anhui Medical University, Hefei 230022, Anhui Province, China
Meng-Ji Lu, Institute of Virology, University Hospital of Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, 45122 Essen, Germany
Dong-Liang Yang, Department of Infectious Diseases, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, Hubei Province, China
Author contributions: Zhang ZH conceived the idea and carried out the literature search and final editing; Wang CT, Zhang YF, Sun BH, Dai Y, Zhu HL and Xu YH performed the experiments; Wang CT and Zhang ZH analyzed the data and wrote the paper; Li X and Zhang ZH contributed reagents, materials, and analysis tools; Yang DL and Lu MJ provided technical assistance and helpful discussion.
Supported by Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China, No. 20093420120005; and National Science Foundation of China, No. 30771907.
Ethics approval: The study was reviewed and approved by the ethics committee of Anhui Medical University.
Clinical trial registration: Not clinical trial.
Informed consent: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest: We all have no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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/
Correspondence to: Zhen-Hua Zhang, MD, PhD, Department of Infectious Diseases, the First Affiliated Hospital, Anhui Medical University, 218 Jixi Road, Hefei 230022, Anhui Province, China. zzh1974cn@163.com
Telephone: +86-551-62922912 Fax: +86-551-62922912
Received: October 28, 2014
Peer-review started: October 29, 2014
First decision: November 26, 2014
Revised: December 17, 2014
Accepted: January 30, 2015
Article in press: January 30, 2015
Published online: May 14, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: The response to interferon (IFN)-α therapy in chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients varies significantly among individuals. This study of 147 patients evaluated multiple serological variables in hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-positive CHB patients treated with IFN-α1b at baseline, 12 wk, and 24 wk, and then developed predictive models for HBeAg seroconversion at each of the 3 time points. The results suggest that models with good negative and positive predictive values were developed to calculate the probability of response to IFN-α therapy.