Role of viral load in Hepatitis B virus evolution in persistently normal ALT chronically infected patients

GAUDER, CATALINA; MAMMANA, LILIA; FLICHMAN, DIEGO; TADEY, LUCIANA; CAMPOS, RODOLFO HÉCTOR; MOJSIEJCZUK, LAURA; BOUZAS, MARIA BELEN

Infection, Genetics and Evolution

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Año: 2019 vol. 67 p. 17 - 22

1567-1348

Chronic HBV infection has been associated with severe liver disease although most of them do not progress to this stage. Even though low replicative carriers form the largest group of HBV chronically infected patients, there is a paucity of longitudinal studies to evaluate the molecular evolution of the whole genome in this subset of patients. In this study, longitudinal samples from 10 patients with persistently normal ALT levels were collected. HBV full-length genome sequences were obtained from 3 samples per patient (baseline, 5 and 10-years of follow-up). Patients were grouped according to HBV-DNA level into 103 IU/ml (group B). The substitution rate was inversely related with HBV-DNA levels. Moreover, the rate in the 10-year follow-up was significantly higher in group A (6.9 × 10−4 ± 1.3 × 10−4) than group B (2.7 × 10−4 ± 7.4 × 10−5 substitution/site/year, p