Hepatitis B viral factors in HBeAg-Negative carriers with persistently normal serum alanine aminotransferase levels

✍ Scribed by Chih-Lin Lin; Li-Ying Liao; Chun-Jen Liu; Ming-Whei Yu; Pei-Jer Chen; Ming-Yang Lai; Ding-Shinn Chen; Jia-Horng Kao

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 159 KB
• Volume: 45
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0270-9139
• DOI: 10.1002/hep.21585

✦ Synopsis

Chronic hepatitis B patients with high-normal serum ALT (levels of 0.5-1؋ upper limit of normal) are still at risk of liver disease progression. We thus investigated the correlation between serum ALT level and hepatitis B viral factors in HBeAg-negative carriers with persistently normal serum ALT level (PNALT). Baseline clinical and virological features of 414 HBeAg-negative carriers, including 176 (42.5%) with low-normal ALT (levels of less than 0.5؋ upper limit of normal) and 238 (57.5%) with high-normal ALT, were compared. Compared with HBV carriers with low-normal ALT, those with high-normal ALT were older (41 vs. 37 years, P < 0.001) and had a greater frequency of serum HBV DNA level >10 4 copies/ml (63.4% vs. 47.5%, P < 0.001) as well as a higher prevalence of basal core promoter T1762/A1764 mutant (36.5% vs. 24.2%, P ‫؍‬ 0.01). Multivariate analysis showed that factors associated with a high-normal serum ALT level included male sex [odds ratio (OR), 1.82; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.10-3.01,