Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Mar 6, 2021; 9(7): 1619-1630
Published online Mar 6, 2021. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v9.i7.1619
Elevated soluble 4-1BB is associated with serum markers of hepatitis B virus in patients with chronic hepatitis B
Meng-Ru Zhan, Xiu-Zhu Gao, Chang Wang, Fei Peng, Xiao-Mei Wang, Hong-Qin Xu, Jun-Qi Niu
Meng-Ru Zhan, Xiu-Zhu Gao, Chang Wang, Fei Peng, Xiao-Mei Wang, Hong-Qin Xu, Jun-Qi Niu, Department of Hepatology, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130021, Jilin Province, China
Xiu-Zhu Gao, Phase I Clinical Research Center, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130021, Jilin Province, China
Author contributions: Niu JQ was the guarantor and designed the study; Zhan MR, Gao XZ and Peng F participated in the acquisition, analysis and interpretation of the data; Zhan MR drafted the initial manuscript; Wang C and Xu HQ revised the article critically for important intellectual content; All authors issued final approval for the version to be submitted.
Supported by Chinese Foundation for Hepatitis Prevention and Control—Tian-Qing Liver Disease Research Fund Subject, No. TQGB20200118.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the local medical ethics committee of the First Hospital of Jilin University.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare no conflict of interest related to this article.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement— checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement— checklist of items.
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: Jun-Qi Niu, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Hepatology, The First Hospital of Jilin University, No. 1 Xinmin Street, Changchun 130021, Jilin Province, China. junqiniu@jlu.edu.cn
Received: November 10, 2020
Peer-review started: November 10, 2020
First decision: December 8, 2020
Revised: December 13, 2020
Accepted: December 22, 2020
Article in press: December 22, 2020
Published online: March 6, 2021
Processing time: 110 Days and 22.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Over 240 million people all round the world are chronically infected with hepatitis B virus, resulting in > 1 million deaths per year. Previous studies have suggested that the costimulatory molecule 4-1BB plays a pivotal role in regulating immunity during chronic viral infection. However, up to now, there is no study about 4-1BB expression in chronic hepatitis B to clarify the role of 4-1BB in the process of chronic hepatitis B clearly. Here, we report our comprehensive study on the expression levels of soluble 4-1BB in plasma and 4-1BB mRNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells to further explain it.