Letter to the Editor: The differences between the reverse transcriptional efficiency of HBV pgRNA and transcriptional efficiency of HBV cccDNA
Hao Liao 1 , Yan Liu 2 , Jun Wang 3 , Guanxun Cheng 1 , Dongping Xu 2 , Junhui Chen 1 , Fengmin Lu 4
Affiliations
Affiliations
1
Intervention and Cell Therapy Center, Peking University Shenzhen Hospital, Shenzhen Peking University, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Medical Center, Shenzhen, 518035, Guangdong province, China.
2
Department of Infectious Diseases, The Fifth Medical Center of Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing, 100039, China.
3
Peking University Ditan Teaching Hospital, Beijing, 100015, China.
4
Department of Microbiology & Infectious Disease Center, School of Basic Medical, Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, 100191, China.
PMID: 33665865 DOI: 10.1002/hep.31786
Abstract
We read with great interest the article entitled "HBV RNA profiles in chronic hepatitis B patients under different disease phases and anti-viral therapy" authored by Mak et al(1). The authors proposed that the reverse transcription efficiency in HBeAg-positive patients was significantly higher than that in HBeAg-negative patients, based on the RNA: DNA ratio in the two groups of patients (0.79 vs. 0.53; p< 0.001). We had found that a higher ratio of serum HBV RNA to HBV DNA was inversely related with reverse transcription efficiency of HBV pgRNA(2), and HBeAg-positive patients had a lower reverse transcription efficiency of HBV pgRNA than HBeAg-negative patients did. We here suggest that the ratio of serum HBV DNA: (HBV DNA + HBV RNA) is more reliable to assess the reverse transcriptional efficiency of pgRNA. The medians of ratio in our cohort were 0.56 (n = 54), 0.56 (n = 23), 0.69 (n = 64) and 0.66 (n = 4), for patients with HBeAg-positive chronic infection, HBeAg-positive chronic hepatitis, HBeAg-negative chronic infection, and HBeAg-negative chronic hepatitis, respectively. Inconsistent with the report by Mak et al., our data showed that the reverse transcriptional efficiency was lower in HBeAg-positive patients than in HBeAg-negative patients (0.56 vs. 0.68; p< 0.001). A schematic diagram for illustrating the efficiencies of covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) transcription and reverse transcription of pgRNA are shown in Figure 1.
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. 作者: StephenW 时间: 2021-3-6 20:06