Hepatitis B Splice-Generated Protein Antibodies in Syrian Chronic Hepatitis B Patients: Incidence and Significance

Background: previous studies have suggested hepatitis b splice-generated protein (hbsp), when expressed, is involved in the pathogenesis of hbv infection. objectives: we aimed to evaluate anti-hbsp incidence and association with several hbv infection parameters in a group of syrian chronic hepatitis b patients. patients and methods: eighty treatment-naïve hbsag-positive adult chronic hepatitis b patients' sera were included in our prospective targeted study. liver function, virological and histological tests results were obtained from patients’ medical files. three variants of a 20-mer hbsp-derived peptide were designed based on hbv genome sequences obtained from syrian patients' sera (genbank accession no. jn257148-jn257217). microtiter plate wells were coated with the synthetic peptides and used to detect anti-hbsp antibodies by an optimized indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (elisa). samples were considered positive when showed optical density (od) values higher than the cut-off value for at least one peptide variant. results: seven out of eighty (9%) chb patients were positive for anti-hbsp antibodies. mean od values were not significantly different between hbeag-positive and -negative patients (p > 0.05). od values showed weak positive correlation with alt and ast values (p < 0.05), and weak to moderate positive correlation with liver biopsy staging ranks (p < 0.05). no significant correlation was revealed with viral load values or liver biopsy grading ranks (p > 0.05). conclusions: we introduced an anti-hbsp antibodies elisa, designed for locally circulating hbv strains. correlation observed of anti-hbsp with liver fibrosis staging regardless of viral replication and liver inflammation suggests anti-hbsp antibodies as possible indicator for hbv-associated liver fibrosis.