Hepatitis B viral mutants and their relevance to the Canadian health care...
HBeAg An additional antigen used in HBV serological testing is HBeAg. As discussed above, HBeAg consists of a large amino acid peptide that is synthesized and secreted by hepatocytes in proportion to...
View ArticleHepatitis B viral mutants and their relevance to the Canadian health care...
The half-life of HBV in the blood has been estimated to be one day. As HBV-DNA levels tend to be relatively constant, given an average viral load, approximately 1011 HBV particles must be released into...
View ArticleHepatitis B viral mutants and their relevance to the Canadian health care...
The second, perhaps more relevant, explanation for the perceived paucity of HBV mutants relates to the unique structure of the HBV genome. The compact nature of the genome (Figure 1) defines four...
View ArticleHepatitis B viral mutants and their relevance to the Canadian health care...
The target of the host’s humoral response to HBV is the hydrophilic region of HBsAg between amino acid residues 100 and 160, the so-called ‘a’ epitope. Thus, a distinct survival advantage would be...
View ArticleHepatitis B viral mutants and their relevance to the Canadian health care...
The study that has most extensively documented the prevalence of S escape mutants is that reported by Hsu et al. Investigators studied approximately 1500 stored sera sampled from children just before...
View ArticleHepatitis B viral mutants and their relevance: Precore and core promoter...
More mutations of the viral genome may be tolerated in the large region of the precore/core ORF, which is not overlapped by another ORF. The most common and extensively studied of these is the glycine...
View ArticleHepatitis B viral mutants and their relevance: Precore and core promoter...
Although initially described in association with histologically active liver disease, including fulminant hepatic failure, the precore mutant has more recently been identified in chronic HBV carriers...
View ArticleHepatitis B viral mutants and their relevance to the Canadian health care...
HBcAg mutants The most immunodominant epitopes of HBcAg are between amino acids 50 and 69, and 61 and 85. Mutations in this region have been described in HBV patients with active hepatitis but not...
View ArticleHepatitis B viral mutants and their relevance to the Canadian health care...
Available data allow the following conclusions to be made regarding the S escape mutant. • The mutants constitute an increasing percentage of ‘vaccine failures’, but their prevalence in the general...
View ArticleHepatitis B viral mutants and their relevance to the Canadian health care...
Regarding core mutants: • Mutations to the core gene are less common than mutations in other areas of the viral genome. • Core mutants appear to be associated with viral escape from immune surveillance...
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