On-treatment monitoring of liver fibrosis with serum hepatitis B core-related antigen in chronic hepatitis B

Figure 3 Hepatitis B virus basal core promoter/precore/core mutations and serum concentration of hepatitis B core-related antigen. A: Heat-map showing semi-supervised clustering of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) baseline hepatitis B core-related antigen (HBcrAg) level (X axis) between the basal core promoter/precure/core (BCP/PC/C) mutant (Y axis). According to the median of HBcrAg level, patients were divided into the low HBcrAg level (blue) and high HBcrAg level (yellow). Red color represents values higher than 2 standard deviations (SD) and blue color represents values lower than 2 SD from the mean value for each variable. B: Proportion of BCP/PC mutant in patients with low HBcrAg level (black bar) and high HBcrAg level (gray bar). C: HBcrAg level in patients with BCP/PC mutant (open box) and BCP/PC non-mutant (solid circle). D: Logarithmic reduction of HBcrAg in patients with BCP non-mutant (grey box) and BCP mutant (white box). BCP: Basal core promoter; PC: Precore; C: Core; CHB: Chronic hepatitis B; HBcrAg: Hepatitis B core-related antigen. Statistical significance is expressed as ^aP < 0.05, ^bP < 0.01 (P > 0.05 usually does not need to be denoted).