Chronic hepatitis B virus(HBV) infection remains a major health problem, with more than 240 million people chronically infected worldwide and potentially 650000 deaths per year due to advanced liver diseases including...Chronic hepatitis B virus(HBV) infection remains a major health problem, with more than 240 million people chronically infected worldwide and potentially 650000 deaths per year due to advanced liver diseases including liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC). HBV-X protein(HBx) contributes to the biology and pathogenesis of HBV via stimulating virus replication or altering host gene expression related to HCC. The HBV X region contains only 465 bp encoding the 16.5 k Da HBx protein, which also contains several critical cis-elements such as enhancer Ⅱ, the core promoter and the micro RNA-binding region. Thus, mutations in this region may affect not only the HBx open reading frame but also the overlapped ciselements. Recently, several types of HBx mutations significantly associated with clinical severity have been described, although the functional mechanism in most of these cases remains unsolved. This review article will mainly focus on the HBx mutations proven to be significantly related to clinical severity via epidemiological studies.展开更多
基金Supported by National Research Foundation grant of Ministry of Science,ICT and Future Planning,South Korea,No.NRF-2015R1C1A1A02037267Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute,funded by the Ministry of Health and Welfare,South Korea,No.HI14C0955
文摘Chronic hepatitis B virus(HBV) infection remains a major health problem, with more than 240 million people chronically infected worldwide and potentially 650000 deaths per year due to advanced liver diseases including liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC). HBV-X protein(HBx) contributes to the biology and pathogenesis of HBV via stimulating virus replication or altering host gene expression related to HCC. The HBV X region contains only 465 bp encoding the 16.5 k Da HBx protein, which also contains several critical cis-elements such as enhancer Ⅱ, the core promoter and the micro RNA-binding region. Thus, mutations in this region may affect not only the HBx open reading frame but also the overlapped ciselements. Recently, several types of HBx mutations significantly associated with clinical severity have been described, although the functional mechanism in most of these cases remains unsolved. This review article will mainly focus on the HBx mutations proven to be significantly related to clinical severity via epidemiological studies.
