With Hbsag Positive Asymptomatic Blood Donors And Chronic Active Hepatitis Patients With Hepatitis B Virus Pre-c Gene Mutation

The study of the mutation in the hepatitis B virus(HBV) PreC gene and its clinical relevance has been conducted all over the world. The most common mutation is the mutation as a Gâ†'A change at nucleotide position 1896 which creates a stop codon at Pre-c cd28, thus leading to a premature termination of PreCore/core protein and preventing the production of HBeAg. This mutation frequently evolves during seroconversion from HBeAg to anti-HBe and is regarded by most investigators to be the result of immune selective pressure of infected host.In this study, among a population of 233 healthy carriers of HBsAg in northern China, whose serum were used to produce hepatitis B virus vaccine, 36 HBeAg-negative asymptomatic carriers were detected and analyzed by direct sequencing of the hepatitis B PreCore gene, only one carrier was detected to be infected by the mixture of wild type and nt 1896 mutant virus. In the control group, ten HBeAg-negative and anti-HBe positive chronic active HBV patients were analyzed. The mutation of 1896 were found in 5 patients(50%), two of them had an additional mutation in nt 1899(Gâ†'T) and another one was infected by mixture on wild type and mutant virus. The results suggest that the occurrence of PreCore mutants in asymptomatic carriers of northern China is infrequently seen.