Scientists from St. Petersburg Pasteur Institute, in cooperation with their Vietnamese colleagues, published the results of their study in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. The researchers examined 316 HIV-infected patients in southern Vietnam. It was found that a third of them (32.6%) had hepatitis B virus DNA in their blood, but a standard HBsAg test detected the infection in only 16%. This means that almost one in five patients has a latent form of hepatitis B, which is not routinely diagnosed.
Particularly alarming is the fact that 6.6% of patients had a seronegative latent infection--in the complete absence of all serological markers, the virus was only detectable by PCR. These patients remain under the radar of physicians, posing a risk of liver disease progression and infection reactivation.
It was also found that patients with latent hepatitis B have a significantly higher incidence of "escape" mutations in the S gene of the virus, which make it invisible to diagnostic tests, as well as the C genotype of the virus, which is associated with a more aggressive course of the disease.
These results highlight the need to implement highly sensitive molecular diagnostic methods for testing HIV-infected patients instead of relying solely on standard serological tests.
The study was carried out within the framework of collaboration between St. Petersburg Pasteur Institute and Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam).