Hepatitis B Biomarker Quantification

Serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), hepatitis B surface antibody (HBsAb), HBeAg, hepatitis B e antibody (HBeAb), hepatitis B core antibody (HBcAb), HBV DNA and alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) were quantified as described in a previous study[24 (link)]. Briefly, ALT and AST were determined using an automated biochemical system (Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, USA). Serum HBsAg, HBsAb, HBeAg, HBeAb and HBcAb were measured using the automatic immune fluorescence analyser Abbott Type i4000 (Abbott Laboratories, USA), following the manufacturer’s instructions. Serum HBV DNA was quantified using the TaqMan polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay (Sansure Biotech, China) in a Roche LightCycler 480 Real-Time PCR System (Roche, Switzerland) with a low quantification limit of 500 IU/ml.