Werner B G, Blumberg B S
Ann Intern Med. 1978 Sep;89(3):310-4. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-89-3-310.
Many investigations consider the presence of e antigen (HBeAg) valuable in predicting which patients with acute hepatitis B are at risk of remaining infected and developing chronic liver disease. We tested this hypothesis in a retrospective study of serial samples from patients undergoing long-term hemodialysis. We found HBeAg in the early phase of all hepatitis B virus (HBV) infections. There was no significant difference between transiently and persistently hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg)-positive persons with regard to the frequency of HBeAg during the first 3 months of HBs antigenemia. Thus during the early period of viral activity, the presence of HBeAg is of no prognostic values in determining chronicity of HBV infection. We believe the disagreement on the prognostic value of HBeAg is a reflection of variations in time and frequency of sampling. The HBeAg remains, however, a useful indicator of potential infectivity of HBsAg(+)persons.
许多研究认为，e抗原（HBeAg）的存在对于预测哪些急性乙型肝炎患者有持续感染及发展为慢性肝病的风险很有价值。我们在一项对长期接受血液透析患者的系列样本进行的回顾性研究中检验了这一假设。我们在所有乙型肝炎病毒（HBV）感染的早期阶段均发现了HBeAg。在HBs抗原血症的前3个月期间，短暂和持续乙型肝炎表面抗原（HBsAg）阳性者之间HBeAg的出现频率无显著差异。因此，在病毒活动的早期，HBeAg的存在对于确定HBV感染的慢性化并无预后价值。我们认为，关于HBeAg预后价值的分歧反映了采样时间和频率的差异。然而，HBeAg仍然是HBsAg阳性者潜在传染性的一个有用指标。
