Hepatitis B virus reactivation after heart transplant: incidence and clinical impact

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection remains a major public health problem with about 248 million people chronically infected [1]. Sexual and parenteral transmission occurs not only from HBV surface antigen (HBsAg) positive subjects, but also from HBsAg-negative donors [2,3] with the so called “occult hepatitis B infection (OBI)”. OBI consists in the long-term persistence of viral genomes (covalently closed circular DNA and/or messenger RNA) in hepatocytes and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), very low (
Source: Journal of Clinical Virology - Category: Virology Authors: Tags: Full length article Source Type: research