Korean J Lab Med.  2009 Feb;29(1):53-58. 10.3343/kjlm.2009.29.1.53.

Subgenotype and Serotype Analysis of Hepatitis B virus in Korean Chronic Hepatitis B Patients Under Treatment

• Cha CH
• Sohn YH
• Ko SY
• Oh HB

• KMID: 1781594
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3343/kjlm.2009.29.1.53

Abstract

BACKGROUND
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) detected in Korean patients almost belongs to genotype C, which is subdivided into subgenotype C1 (or Cs) and C2 (or Ce). It was recently reported that the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma is different between subgenotype C1 and C2. Thus, we studied the distribution of subgenotypes of HBV in Korean chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients.
METHODS
Specimens of 421 patients, who were diagnosed as CHB and underwent antiviral treatment, were used. After sequence analysis for HBV S gene, subgenotype was identified through phylogenetic analysis. Utilizing the same sequence data, the distribution of serotypes was also investigated.
RESULTS
Among 421 patient specimens, genotype C was found in 419 (99.5%) and genotype B in 2 (0.5%). Among the genotype C strains, 417 strains were C2 subgenotype and 2 strains were mixed subgenotypes. However, C2 was evidently found even in the mixed sequences. Serotypes of 419 HBV with genotype C were classified as follows: adr, 385 (91.9%), adw, 22 (5.3%), ayr, 2 (0.4%) and mixed serotype, 10 (2.3%). Serotype of both HBV with genotype B was adw.
CONCLUSIONS
It was found that HBV detected in Korean CHB patients under treatment almost all belong to the C2 (Ce) genotype.

Keyword

Hepatitis B virus; Genotype; Subgenotype; Serotype

MeSH Terms

Antiviral Agents/therapeutic use
Blood Specimen Collection
Genotype
Hepatitis B virus/*classification/genetics
Hepatitis B, Chronic/diagnosis/drug therapy/*virology
Humans
Korea
Phylogeny
Sequence Analysis, DNA
Serotyping

Figure

• 

  Fig. 1. Phylogenetic tree of HBV S gene of 7 patients and 35 HBV sequences of NCBI database representing every genotype and C1/C2 subgenotype. Each of the first letter A to H means HBV (sub)genotype and followings are NCBI accession numbers. Examples of patents’ HBV sequences are shown as P1, P2, etc. A sequence with mixed peaks was subdivided into two sequences like P1-1/P1-2 in P1 and P2-1/P2-2 in P2 according to similarity to reference X04615.

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