Importance of Isolated Anti-HBc in Detection of Occult Hepatitis B Virus Infection in Hemodialysis Patients

摘要

Dear Editor, We greatly enjoyed reading the article by Nagakawa et al. on occult hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in Japanese chronic hemodialysis (HD) patients, which was recently published in your journal. They showed that the prevalence of occult HBV infection (OBI) in HD patients from eastern Japan was 0.3% and all of them were only hepatitis B core antibody (anti-HBc) positive (1). Occult HBV infection is defined by the presence of HBV-DNA in the liver or serum with undetectable hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) (2). OBI patients may be seronegative (both anti-HBc and hepatitis B surface antibody [anti-HBs] are negative) or seroposi-tive (anti-HBc is positive with or without anti-HBs positivity) (3). OBI is predominantly detected in patients with isolated anti-HBc (HBsAg negative, anti-HBs negative and anti-HBc positive) (4,5).