Abstract:

BACKGROUND: HBV-CCCDNA existing in peripheral blood mononuclear cell has been reported in literatures, then, whether the recurrent hepatitis B (HBV) possibly comes from the DNA grains which are phagocytized by macrophages but not clear wholly.
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship between macrophages and HBV recurrence in HBV-related patients after liver transplantation.
METHODS: Venous blood with anticoagulation was extracted from 13 different HBV-related patients whose hepatitis B recurred after liver transplantation, while, we collected 14 examples from patients whose HBV was negative after liver transplantation for comparison. These examples were separated though Ficoll-Hypaque density centrifugation to get PBMC, then PBMC was cultured for 7 days with rhGM-CSF and RPMI-1640 which contained 10% calf serum to get adherent cells. Special antibody CD-14 was detected with flow cytometry to assay the adherent cells nature. HBV-CCCDNA within the cells was detected though fluorescent-quantitative PCR.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Of 13 patients who had HBV again after liver transplantation, 69.23% were HBV-CCCDNA positive within macrophages. Only 1 patient of 14 whose HBV did not recur, and its HBV- CCCDNA was positive, that was 7.14% (P < 0.01). There is probably a relationship between HBV recurrence after liver transplantation and HBV CCCDNA in macrophages.