Editorial: Precision medicine in viral hepatitis: progress and prospects towards elimination

FERNÁNDEZ-RODRÍGUEZ, AMANDA; VALVA, PAMELA

Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology

fRONTIERS

Año: 2024 vol. 14

Viral hepatitis poses a significant global public health challenge, impacting millions ofindividuals through both acute and chronic infections, that can lead to conditions such ascirrhosis and liver cancer. Despite notable progress in medical advancements, certainaspects of its pathogenesis, immune response, and treatment remain areas of contention.The analysis of host-pathogen interactions provides a pathway to identify biomarkerscrucial for diagnosis, prognosis, and understanding of disease progression. To maximizethese advance’s success, it is necessary to develop and use new molecular, bioinformatic,statistical, and technical approaches to implement these tools for precision medicine.This Research Topic aims to bring greater visibility to key issues addressed in both basicand clinical research, exploring essential topics that tackle current challenges and pave theway for future research directions. The ultimate goal is to expedite viral eliminationthrough a comprehensive understanding of the disease and the strategic application ofinnovative tools and approaches.This compilation encompasses eight articles that underscore the dynamic strides beingtaken in comprehending and tackling the challenges associated with hepatitis in general,and mostly in hepatitis B virus (HBV). These articles delve into treatment modalities,immune response mechanisms, biomarker identification, and the influence of microbiotachanges on both the immune system and disease progression. Together, they providesignificant insights into diverse facets of hepatitis, offering a comprehensive overview of thecurrent landscape in thefield.This Research Topic sheds light on new approaches to identify metabolic risk inpatients infected with hepatic viruses.Zhao et al.explored the intricate interplay betweenmetabolism and viral hepatitis, introducing two risk assessment models grounded inmetabolic pathways as valuable tools to assess disease progression and prognosis. Authorsused publicly available mRNA expression profiles from nearly 500 patients to performsingle-sample gene set enrichment analysis to screen and select the metabolic pathwaysrelated to risk and prognosis. By incorporating the estimated infiltration of immune cellsand single-cell transcriptomics data, authors suggested that the dysfunction of liver