Hepatitis B surface antigen particles of subtypesadw andadr, and compound subtype (adwr) in symptom-free carriers in Japan

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Abstract
Of sera from 1,878 Japanese blood donors who carried hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), 420 were subtyped as adw(22.4%) and 1,443 as adr(76.8%); only 15 (0.8%) contained HBsAg of subtype aywor ayr. Sera with HBsAg/adrhad higher HBsAg titres than those with HBsAg/adw (geometric mean of haemagglutination titre: 10.1 ± 2.4 vs. 9.7 ± 2.4, p p adwwith increasing age. Of sera from 1,863 carriers of HBsAg/adwor HBsAg/adr, 182 (9.8%) contained HBsAg particles with both subtypic determinants in the wir allele. The presence of wand rdeterminants on the same particles was ascertained by sandwiching them between monoclonal antibody with the specificity for w and that with the specificity for r. HBsAg particles of compound subtype (adwr)were found more often in sera with hepatitis B e antigen than those without it (145/403 [36.0%] vs. 37/1,460 [2.5%], p adwrparticles had HBsAg titres higher than those without them (12.4 ± 1.9 vs. 9.7 ± 2.3, p adwrparticles arise from phenotypic mixing of the S‐gene product of wild‐type virus and that of mutants with point mutations for subtypic changes. The results obtained indicated that HBV strains of subtype adrhave a higher replicative activity than those of adw, and suggested that mutations in the S gene for subtypic changes would be associated with an active replication of hepatitis B virus.

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