Quantification of HBV RNA in patients with chronic hepatitis B

To cite: Testoni B, Scholtès C, Plissonnier M, et al. Quantification of circulating HBV RNA expressed from intrahepatic cccDNA in untreated and NUC treated patients with chronic hepatitis B. Gut 2024;73:659-667.
Read the full article here: dx.doi.org/10.1...
Objective: A convenient, reproducible biomarker of hepatitis B virus (HBV) covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) transcriptional activity is lacking. We measured circulating HBV RNA (cirB-RNA) in untreated and nucleos(t)ide analogues (NUC) treated chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients to define its correlation with intrahepatic viral markers and HBV core-related antigen (HBcrAg).
Conclusion: Our results support the usefulness of quantification of circulating HBV RNA expressed from cccDNA as an indicator of intrahepatic active viral reservoir in both untreated and NUC-treated CHB patients.