Relevancy between liver injury, serum HBV-DNA, and intrahepatic HBcAg in young male chronic HBV carriers]

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Although the viral load is correlated with HBcAg, liver injury was not correlated to viral load in HBeAg positive patient. We aimed to study the inter-relationship of clinical parameters such as the level of HBV-DNA, the level of aminotransferase, intrahepatic expression of HBcAg and severity of histological liver damage in the young male chronic HBV carriers according to HBeAg status. METHODS: The study group included 85 young male patients (mean age: 19.8) with biopsy-proven chronic hepatitis B (HBeAg-positive group: n=60, HBeAg-negative group: n=25). RESULTS: Serum levels of HBV-DNA and the expression of intrahepatic HBcAg in the HBeAg-positive group were significantly higher than in the HBeAg-negative (p<0.001), but fibrosis score was lower (p<0.01). Serum levels of HBV-DNA positively correlated with lobular activity, portal/periportal activity, biochemical activities in the HBeAg-negative group but negatively correlated in the HBeAg-positive group. There were no significant differences in histological activity according to the pattern of expression of intrahepatic HBcAg in both groups. The lobular activity correlated positively with biochemical activity in both groups, and portal/periportal activity correlated with biochemical activity only in the HBeAg-positive group. CONCLUSIONS: There are close correlations among liver injury, intrahepatic expression of HBcAg, and detectable HBV-DNA in the young male chronic HBV carriers with HBeAg-negativity, but in the HBeAg-positive group, the correlations are diversified.