Hepatitis B virus genotype has no impact on hepatitis B e antigen seroconversion after lamivudine treatment

Table 1 Clinical characteristics of patients on anti-viral treat-ments and controls

	Overall (n = 131)	Controls (n = 96)	Lamivudine (n = 35)	P value
Age	30 (12-68)	29 (12-68)	38 (22-47)	0.007
Male gender (n,%)	75 (57%)	50 (52%)	25 (71%)	0.074
Initial ALT (IU/l)	73 (17-1122)	57.5 (17-753)	135 (36-1122)	< 0.001
Follow-up (months)	39 (18-49)	39 (19-49)	27 (18-46)	0.009
Genotype				0.40
B (n,%)	43 (33%)	29 (30%)	14 (40%)
C (n,%)	88 (67%)	67 (70%)	21 (60%)
HBeAg	28 (21%)	24 (25%)	4 (11%)	0.15
seroconversion (n,%)

Table 2 Clinical characteristics of patients infected by geno-type B and C HBV

	Genotype B (n = 43)	Genotype C (n = 88)	P value
Age	34 (13-67)	29 (12-68)	0.14
Male gender (n,%)	28 (65%)	47 (53%)	0.28
Initial ALT (IU/l)	70 (17-1094)	77 (18-1122)	0.60
Follow-up (months)	38 (18-49)	39 (18-49)	0.49
Treatment (n,%)			0.40
Nil	29 (67%)	67 (76%)
Lamivudine	14 (33%)	21 (24%)

Table 3 Comparison of HBeAg seroconversion among patients infected by genotype B and C HBV

HBeAg seroconversion	Genotype B	Genotype C	P value 1	P value 2
Control	10/29 (35%)	14/67 (21%)	0.25	0.41
Lamivudine	2/14 (14%)	2/21 (10%)	1.00	0.51

P value 1: unadjusted comparison of genotype B versus geno-type C; P value 2: comparison of genotype B versus genotype C after adjustment for age, gender, initial ALT levels and fol-low-up duration.