HBsAg 이 양성인 만성 간질환 환자에서 중합효소 연쇄반응법을 이용한 HBV DNA 검출의 의의 = Detection of HBV DNA in HBsAg - positive Patients with Chronic Liver Disease Using the Polymerase Chain ReactionHBsAg 이 양성인 만성 간질환 환자에서 중합효소 연쇄반응법을 이용한 HBV DNA 검출의 의의

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The identification of serum HBV DNA is very important for the assessment of the disease activity in persistent infection, for the evaluation of the infectivity of an individual's blood, and for monitoring the therapeutic trials of antiviral agents. The dot blot, however, has limited sensitivity and sometimes inconsistent with other serological markers and clinical settings. Using the most important recent advance in molecular biology, the novel polymerase chain reaction (PCR), specific DNA sequences can be amplified more than a million-fold in a few hours and with this technique the detection of the extreme low level of DNA is possible. This study was to determine the detection level and sensitivity of the PCR-Southern blot analysis for the detection of serum HBV DNA in comparison with dot blot analysis and to investigate the persistence of HBV replication in 66 HBsAg-positive chronic liver disease patients with different sets of HBV serological profile; group 1) 33 HBsAg-, anti-HBc- and HBeAg-positive patients, group 2) 33 HBsAg-, anti-HBc- and anti-HBe-positive patients. The results were summarized as following; The detection levels of HBV DNA by dot blot, PCR-ethidium bromide staining, PCR-Southern blot were 1 pg, 10-2 pg, 10-5 pg., respectively. The detection rates of HBV DNA by dot blot, PCR-ethidium bromide staining, PCR-Southern blot were 84.8%, 93.9% and 100% in group 1, 42.4%, 63.6% and 72.7% in group 2, respectively. In conclusion, we confirmed that the PCR-Southern blot analysis is much more sensitive than the dot blot analysis in detecting the HBV DNA in the sera of patients with chronic liver disease. Presence of HBV DNA by the PCR highly suggested that active viral replication is still going on in most patients with chronic HBsAg-positive liver disease irrespective of HBeAg/anti-HBe status.