Relationship between serum b2-microglobulin levels and virological breakthrough in HBeAg-negative chronic hepatitis B patients, under long-term treatment schedules including lamivudine

Table 4 Cox proportional hazard model predicting VB by b2m at 3 mo as a dichotomous variable. The model simultaneously includes age, baseline values for ALT, grade of liver disease and initial serum HBV-DNA as covariates.

	Variable	RR	95%CI
Age (yr)	Continuous	0.98	0.92–1.05
ALT (IU/L)	Continuous	0.99	0.98–1.00
Grade (0–18)	Continuous	1.26	0.98–1.63
HBV-DNA (copies/mL)	High vs low	1.94	0.26–14.26
B2m (mg/dL)	Decline vs elevation	12.23	1.28–116.801

¹Indicates that the RR does not include 1. ALT: alanine aminotransferase. CI: confidence interval. RR: rate ratios.