Tajiri Hitoshi, Tanaka Yasuhito, Kagimoto Seiiti, Murakami Jun, Tokuhara Daisuke, Mizokami Masashi
Osaka General Medical Center, Osaka, Japan.
J Med Virol. 2007 Jul;79(7):922-6. doi: 10.1002/jmv.20916.
At present in Japan, only high-risk infants born to chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV)-infected mothers are given HBV vaccine. However, children can contract the virus from other HBV-infected family members, including fathers. The aim of this study is to present substantial and unequivocal evidence of father-to-child transmission of HBV infection using techniques including homology analysis and phylogenetic analysis. Thirteen chronic HBV-infected members of five families that included eight children and their respective fathers were enrolled in this study. Homology analysis and phylogenetic analyses of 2 coding region, the S gene and X gene, from the HBV genome were performed comparing the 13 nucleotide sequences from the 13 subjects. The nucleotide homology among the five sets of fathers and children was quite high (99.3-100%). A phylogenetic tree constructed on the 13 nucleotide sequences showed that all 5 sets of fathers and children were grouped into the same cluster with high bootstrap values. These results strongly indicate that father-to-child transmission is an important route of HBV infection in Japan and it is recommend that universal vaccination against HBV infection be instituted immediately in Japan for all children, in accordance with the WHO recommendation of 1997.
目前在日本，只有慢性乙肝病毒（HBV）感染母亲所生的高危婴儿会接种乙肝疫苗。然而，儿童可能会从包括父亲在内的其他HBV感染家庭成员那里感染该病毒。本研究的目的是运用同源性分析和系统发育分析等技术，提供乙肝病毒感染父婴传播的确凿证据。本研究纳入了五个家庭的13名慢性HBV感染成员，其中包括八个孩子及其各自的父亲。对来自HBV基因组的2个编码区，即S基因和X基因，进行同源性分析和系统发育分析，比较了13名受试者的13个核苷酸序列。五组父子之间的核苷酸同源性相当高（99.3 - 100%）。根据这13个核苷酸序列构建的系统发育树表明，所有五组父子都被归入同一个聚类，自展值很高。这些结果有力地表明，在日本，父婴传播是乙肝病毒感染的一条重要途径，建议按照世界卫生组织1997年的建议，在日本立即对所有儿童实施普遍的乙肝病毒感染疫苗接种。
