The Risk Of Occult Hepatitis B Virus Infection In Children And Detection Method

Background: Although hepatitis B vaccine immunization plan has been implemented in China for nearly 30 years,while it is still the areas of intermediate HBV endemicity.In this study,we had tried to analysis the changes of HBV seromarkers in children for evaluating the risk of occult HBV infection(OBI)and studying the detection method of OBI.Methods: HBV seromarkers were analyzed among 215,627 hospitalized Chinese children from Aug,2012 to Dec,2017.Explore OBI detection method from primer design of multi-gene fragments,nucleic acid extraction,and PCR amplification.Results: The hepatitis B core antibody(HBcAb)positive rate among children aged 1-16 is about 5.99%.The prevalence of hepatitis B surface antigen(HBsAg)is 0.3% at the age of 0,0.55% at the age of 1-9,and increases significantly when the age is> 9 years,at 1.40%.The multiplex quantitative PCR was initially established for OBI detection.This method has high detection sensitivity and specificity.Conclusion: Relatively high prevalence of HBcAb may not be ignored in children aged 1-to 16-year-old.Occult HBV breakthrough infection could occur in immunized Chinese children.Therefore,it is particularly important to establish a new method to detect OBI timely and accurately.