Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 7, 2015; 21(21): 6639-6648
Published online Jun 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i21.6639
Precore/basal core promoter mutants quantification throughout phases of hepatitis B virus infection by Simpleprobe
Wen-Hui Tu, Ying Lv, Yong-Mei Zhang, Wei Hou, Jin-Yu Wang, Yi-Jun Zhang, Hong-Yan Liu, Hao-Xiang Zhu, Yan-Li Qin, Ri-Cheng Mao, Ji-Ming Zhang
Wen-Hui Tu, Ying Lv, Yong-Mei Zhang, Jin-Yu Wang, Yi-Jun Zhang, Hong-Yan Liu, Hao-Xiang Zhu, Yan-Li Qin, Ri-Cheng Mao, Ji-Ming Zhang, Department of Infectious Disease, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 200040, China
Wen-Hui Tu, Wei Hou, Department of Infectious Disease, Taizhou Municipal Hospital, Taizhou 318000, Zhejiang Province, China
Ying Lv, Department of Infectious Disease, Public Health Clinical Center of Shanghai, Fudan University, Shanghai 201508, China
Author contributions: Tu WH and Lv Y contributed equally to this work; Tu WH, Lv Y and Zhang JM designed the study; Tu WH and Lv Y performed the majority of the study; Tu WH and Hou W collected the serum specimens and clinical data; Zhang YM, Wang JY, Zhang YJ, Liu HY, Zhu HX, Qin YL and Mao RC also participated in the experiments; Tu WH, Lv Y and Zhang YM wrote the manuscript; Zhang JM revised the manuscript.
Supported by National Science and Technology Major Project of China, No. 2012ZX10002007-001-002 and No. 2013ZX10002001 (to Zhang JM); the National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81271833 and No. 81471933 (to Zhang JM); the Science and Technology Plan Project of Taizhou, Zhejiang province, No. 1402ky19 (to Tu WH and Hou W); and the Scientific Research Project of Taizhou University, Zhejiang province, No: 2014PY054 (to Tu WH and Hou W).
Ethics approval: The study was reviewed and approved by the Huashan Hospital and Taizhou Municipal Hospital Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest: All participating authors have declared no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at jmzhang@fudan.edu.cn. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing.
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: Ji-Ming Zhang, MD, Department of Infectious Disease, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, No. 12 Wulumuqi Zhong Road, Shanghai 200040, China. jmzhang@fudan.edu.cn
Telephone: +86-21-52888125 Fax: +86-21-62489015
Received: November 2, 2014
Peer-review started: November 3, 2014
First decision: December 26, 2014
Revised: February 3, 2015
Accepted: February 11, 2015
Article in press: February 11, 2015
Published online: June 7, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: During the natural history of hepatitis B virus infection, no evidence for the correlation between the dynamic alteration of precore/basal core promoter (PC/BCP) mutated strains and hepatitis B early antigen titers has been obtained by qualitative analysis. Using Simpleprobe ultrasensitive quantification of the wild-type and mutated hepatitis B virus (HBV) strains, we provided new insights into the process by which PC/BCP-mutated strains become dominant during the natural course of infection. Thus, we provide important clues for the evaluation of HBV infection status and the corresponding host immune responses.