A serological marker correlated with cccDNA for improved monitoring of HBV patients under treatment
The most common used treatment for patients with chronic HBV infection are nucleos(t)ide analogues (NUC’s). This treatment has overcome the problem of side-efects and genotype-dependency that is observed in the treatment with pegylated-interferon. However, where treatment with interferon is finite, this is not the case with NUC´s.
Potential stopping rules for treatment are therefore highly wanted by both the clinicians and the patients. Another difficulty is that the active replication of HBV can only be determined by an invasive and non-standardized way: measurement of covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) which is very dependent on the technology used and this from a liver biopsy which is an invasive sample to collect.
Patients today are monitored with diferent tools such as ALT, HBV DNA and (quantifcation of) hepatitis B surface antigen. HBcrAg can serve to measure the replication of the virus and is today already used in Japan in routine monitoring to identify patients where treatment can be discontinued.1
References:
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Ohishi W, et al. Treatment of chronic hepatitis B with nucleos(t)ide analogues. Hepatol. Res. 2012 Mar; 42(3): 219-25.
Lumipulse® G HBcrAg
Our Lumipulse G HBcrAg immunoreaction cartridges set for Research Use Only (not for use in diagnostic procedures) with the LUMIPULSE® G System for the quantitative detection of hepatitis B virus core-related antigen in serum or plasma.
