Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 28, 2020; 26(20): 2584-2598
Published online May 28, 2020. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v26.i20.2584
Conservation and variability of hepatitis B core at different chronic hepatitis stages
Marçal Yll, Maria Francesca Cortese, Mercedes Guerrero-Murillo, Gerard Orriols, Josep Gregori, Rosario Casillas, Carolina González, Sara Sopena, Cristina Godoy, Marta Vila, David Tabernero, Josep Quer, Ariadna Rando, Rosa Lopez-Martinez, Rafael Esteban, Mar Riveiro-Barciela, Maria Buti, Francisco Rodríguez-Frías
Marçal Yll, Maria Francesca Cortese, Gerard Orriols, Rosario Casillas, Carolina González, Sara Sopena, Cristina Godoy, Marta Vila, David Tabernero, Ariadna Rando, Rosa Lopez-Martinez, Francisco Rodríguez-Frías, Liver Pathology Unit, Departments of Biochemistry and Microbiology, Hospital Universitari Vall d'Hebron, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona 08035, Spain
Marçal Yll, Maria Francesca Cortese, Mercedes Guerrero-Murillo, Josep Gregori, Rosario Casillas, Sara Sopena, Marta Vila, Josep Quer, Francisco Rodríguez-Frías, Liver Unit, Liver Disease Laboratory-Viral Hepatitis, Vall d'Hebron Institut Recerca-Hospital Universitari Vall d'Hebron, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona 08035, Spain
Mercedes Guerrero-Murillo, Department of Microbiology, Hospital Universitari Vall d'Hebron, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona 08035, Spain
Josep Gregori, Cristina Godoy, David Tabernero, Josep Quer, Rafael Esteban, Mar Riveiro-Barciela, Maria Buti, Francisco Rodríguez-Frías, Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Enfermedades Hepáticas y Digestivas, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid 28029, Spain
Rafael Esteban, Mar Riveiro-Barciela, Maria Buti, Liver Unit, Department of Internal Medicine, Hospital Universitari Vall d'Hebron, Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, Barcelona 08035, Spain
Author contributions: Rodríguez-Frías F designed the research; Cortese MF coordinated the research; Yll M and Cortese MF equally contributed to design the experiments; Yll M, Orriols G, Godoy C, Sopena S, Casillas R, González C, Vila M and Rando A performed the experiments; Yll M, Cortese MF, Gregori J and Guerrero-Murillo M analyzed data acquired during the experiments and interpreted the results; Yll M and Cortese MF drafted the manuscript; Cortese MF, Tabernero D, Lopez-Martinez R, Riveiro-Barciela M, Buti M, Quer J, Esteban R and Rodríguez-Frías F critically reviewed the manuscript.
Supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Spain, the European Regional Development Fund, No. PI18/01436.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Clinical Research Ethics Committee of Hospital Universitari Vall d’Hebron.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Josep Gregori is an employee of Roche Diagnostics, SL.
Data sharing statement: Next-generation sequencing data were submitted to the GenBank SRA database (BioProject accession number PRJNA625435).
ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Maria Francesca Cortese, PhD, Research Scientist, Liver Pathology Unit, Departments of Biochemistry and Microbiology, Hospital Universitari Vall d’Hebron, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Passeig Vall d’Hebron 119-129, Barcelona 08035, Spain. maria.cortese@vhir.org
Received: February 28, 2020
Peer-review started: February 28, 2020
First decision: April 9, 2020
Revised: May 8, 2020
Accepted: May 19, 2020
Article in press: May 19, 2020
Published online: May 28, 2020
Processing time: 90 Days and 1.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: New tools for hepatitis B virus infection treatment and follow-up are needed. Hepatitis B virus core protein has a key role in viral replication and persistence. Analysis of viral quasispecies by next-generation sequencing can identify conserved regions in viral genes or proteins that may serve as targets for new therapeutic and diagnostic strategies. Moreover, it may help identify prognostic markers of liver disease progression. Here, we detected hyper-conserved nucleotide and amino acid regions regardless of the clinical stage. Moreover, we observed several group-specific conserved and variable regions and an amino acid substitution that could be indicative of different disease progression.