Hepatitis B virus (HBV) enhancer II (EnII) is a hepatotropic cis element which is responsible for the hepatocyte-specific gene expression of HBV. Multiple transcription factors have been demonstrated to interact with this region. In this study, the region from HBV nucleotides (nt) 1640 to 1663 in EnII was demonstrated to be essential for enhancer activity and to be another target sequence of pu...

BACKGROUND AND AIM Viral hepatitis is a health threat for hemodialysis (HD) patients and it may be transmitted during treatment. Some patients categorized to have viral hepatitis were found to be non-viremic. To clarify the discrepancy between the serological tests in HD patients, we conducted the study. METHODS A total of 1681 HD patients was included. Blood samples were analyzed for hepatit...

The terminally redundant pregenomic RNA of human hepatitis B virus (HBV) comprises some 3,330 nucleotides and is a replicative intermediate in the production of the circular DNA genome. Deletions are known to arise in the HBV genome during the course of chronic infection and are sometimes associated with interferon therapy. These deletions are limited to small parts of the genome such as the 35...

BACKGROUND Hepatitis B virus (HBV) chronic infection affects up to 240 million people in the world and it is a common cause of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). HBV covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) plays an essential role in HBV persistence and replication. Current pharmacological treatment with nucleos(t)ide analogues (NA) may suppress HBV replication with little or no impac...

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a hepatocyte-specific DNA virus whose gene expression and replication are closely associated with hepatic metabolic processes. Thus, a potential anti-viral strategy is to target the host metabolic factors necessary for HBV gene expression and replication. Recent studies revealed that fatty acid translocase CD36 is involved in the replication, assembly, storage, and se...

Results The results of this study demonstrate that hepatitis E virus (HEV-RNA) infection to be rare (6.25%) in HBVDNA positive cases. Surface antigen (HBsAg) for hepatitis B virus was positive in 18 cases (45%) and IgM Anti HEV was positive in 16 cases (40%). Hepatitis B virus infections, as the predominant causes of liver diseases, HBV-DNA was detected in 32 cases out of 40 cases and HEV-RNA w...

The longest hepatitis B virus transcript is a 3.9-kb mRNA whose function remained unclear. In this study, we wished to identify the translation products and physiological role of this viral transcript. This transcript initiates from the X promoter region ignoring the inefficient and noncanonical viral polyadenylation signal at the first round of transcription. However, an HBV mutant with canoni...

BACKGROUND Hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis D virus (HDV), and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are transmitted by blood transfusion. Thus, hemodialysis (HD) patients are more prone to become the carriers of these infections due to their treatment demands. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of HBV and HIV infections among HD patients in Bandar Abbas, Iran, 2015....

The aim of this study was to analyze the association of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with hepatitis C virus (HCV) in Egypt, using hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis E virus (HEV) as virus controls. In addition, the association of HCC with HCV RNA levels among persons seropositive for HCV was analyzed. We compared 131 patients with proven HCC, 247 with bladder cancer, and 466 healthy hospit...

We compared hepatitis B virus (HBV) surface antigen, anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV) antibody, and HCV RNA quantification in frozen and freeze-dried serum samples to assess the usefulness of freeze-dried sera for detection of HBV and HCV. The results indicated that freeze-dried sera as well as frozen sera can be useful for serological and molecular biological analyses of HBV and HCV.