| dc.description.abstract | Background: A Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) viral load measurement is recommended for
diagnosis and monitoring of patients on treatment for Chronic Hepatitis B (CHB). However,
these diagnostic techniques are molecular-based and expensive and unavailable to majority
of the Ugandan population. Quantitation of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) by
automated chemiluminescent micro-particle immunoassay has been proposed as a surrogate
marker.
Objectives: This study showed the correlation between HBsAg and HBV DNA levels among
patients with CHB attending a referral Laboratory in Kampala, Uganda.
Methods:A two-step sampling technique was employed where One hundred and seventythree (173) patients were enrolled while excluding Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) and Hepatitis D
Virus (HDV) positive patients, these were then stratified into two strata notably core for
chronic HBV and envelope for Acute HBV until a sample size of 52 respondents with equal
proportions of core and envelope for both strata.
Results: The mean age of the study patients was 37.2 years, 34 (64.7%) were male, and 66
(82.1%) were hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) negative while 31/52 (17.9%) were HBeAg
positive. Samples above were divided into two strata; 1) HBcAb positive (n=102) and, 2)
HBeAg positive (n=73). Twenty-six samples were then selected from each of the strata to
yield a sample size of 52 for subsequent experimentation. Out of these 52 participants, 34
(64.7%) were male while 15 (35.3%) were female with their mean age being 37.17 years.
Generally, concentrations of HBsAg ranged from 170,000,000 IU/ml/141,100,000 ng/ml to
3,600 IU/ml/2,988.0 ng/ml with a mean of13,385,986.67/11,110,368.9 respectively. We
observed a positive correlation (r=0.776) between viral load and HBsAg. The correlation was
strongest among acutely infected versus chronically infected.Overall, a strong and sufficient
correlation was found between serum quantitative HBsAg and HBV DNA (r = 0.776; P =
0.024). Quantitative HBsAg was a weak but significant correlated with HBV-DNA among
the HBeAg positive patients (r = 0.672; P = 0.093). Similarly, there was significant
correlation found among the HBcAg negative patients (r = 0.741; P = 0.443).
Conclusions:Given these limitations of this study that provided an insight on to differences
in HBV DNA and HBsAg levels between HBeAg-positive and -negative patients, which
appear to be affected by HBeAg and HBcAg status. Therefore, serum quantitation of HBsAg
may replace serum HBV DNA levels among HBV patients in Uganda only if a similar study
is conducted that takes care of controls and all the confounders including HIV Status of the
respondents and the above recommendation can be implemented. | en_US |
