Source: The Third Affiliated Hospital
Written by: Department of Infectious Diseases, The Third Affiliated Hospital
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a serious global public health problem. It is estimated that every year nearly 800 thousand people will die of chronic HBV infection-related diseases including liver cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma. Nucleot(s)ide analogues (NAs) is the main treatment of hepatitis B at present. NAs can significantly inhibit HBV replication, but it is still difficult to achieve clinical cure of chronic hepatitis B. There are major defects of NAs: Long term use of drugs is not only expensive, but also prone to drug resistance; the relapse rate is high, and there is no global consensus on the standard for safe discontinuation of NAs. Therefore, exploring new markers for “HBV Cure” could largely save the patient's medical expenses and social medical costs.

Supported by National Science and Technology Major Project and NSFC, a research on exploring new markers for HBV Cure was carried out in the cooperation of Prof. Lu Fengmin from Peking University, study team of Prof. Gao Zhiliang from The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University (including Prof. Peng Liang, Dr. Zhu Xiang, Dr. Xie Chan and colleagues from the Department of Infectious Diseases), Prof. Xia Ningshao from Xiamen University, Prof. Ren Hong from Chongqing Medical University and other four organizations. In this study, the nature and origin of serum HBV RNA was investigated in both in vitro and in vivo experiments to mechanistically determine the potential clinical significance of HBV RNA in serum. The level of HBV RNA virion in serum may be associated with the risk of HBV viral rebound after withdrawal of the treatment, and therefore, a potential predictive biomarker to monitor the safe discontinuation of NAs-therapy.

This study, entitled “Serum hepatitis B virus RNA is encapsidated pregenome RNA that may be associated with persistence of viral infection and rebound”, was published online on May 28th 2016 in Journal of Hepatology —— one of the top journals in the field of liver diseases. Prof. Gao Zhiliang from the Third Affiliated Hospital is one of the corresponding authors. The Journal of Hepatology is the official journal of EASL (European Association for the Study of the Liver), which is one of the world’s top 3 preeminent liver associations with global reach and influence in Clinical Practice Guidelines recommendations. The impact factor of the latest Thomson Reuters released in 2016 is 10.590, and its SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) is 4.570.

This research opens a new way in exploring "HBV Cure". It is a new achievement by our department published in top journals in recent five years, ever since papers published in Hepatology (IF= 11.711) in 2011, 2012 and 2015, as well as in Lancet Oncology (IF= 26.509) in 2015. This indicates that the Department of Infectious Diseases in The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University has reached International advanced level in the field of liver diseases study.