Abstract
Purpose: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection has a wide spectrum of liver diseases, ranging from acute or fulminant hepatitis, chronic hepatitis, and cirrhosis to hepatocellular carcinoma. Recently, HBV genotypes have attracted increasing attention as they may affect the disease progression and outcomes of HBV related chronic liver disease, as well as to response to antiviral therapies. It has been reported that different hepatitis B virus (HBV) genotypes has distinct geographic distribution. Genotype A is prevalent in northern and central Europe, but it is also common in North America and sub Saharan Africa. Genotypes B and C are confined to Asia. Genotype D is widespread, but it is the predominant genotype in the Mediterranean region, while genotype E is found mainly in West Africa. Genotype F shows the highest divergence among the genotypes and is indigenous to aboriginal population of the America. The newly described genotype G has been found in USA and France. We aimed to study the prevalence of HBV genotypes in Saudi Arabia since there are no published data as well as to look for any association between different HBV genotypes with Alanine aminotransferases (ALT), Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), Hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) and HBV viral load. Methods: Between January 2004 to December 2005, 912 HBV PCR positive serums were collected from Saudi patients and from this pool fifty-eight samples were selected randomly for HBV genotyping by INNO-LiPA (a line probe assay). Association between genotypes and HBsAg, HBeAg, ALT and viral load were tested using chi square test using SPSS version 11. Results: Their mean age was 38.9 years (range 5–73 years) and 44 (76%) of them were male. Out of the 58 patients tested for HBV genotyping, 50 (86.2%) were HBV genotype D; three were genotype A (5.2%), three genotype E and two (3.4%) genotype A/D (mixed). There was no association between genotypes with ALT, HBsAg, HBeAg and viral load (p value >0.05). Conclusions: HBV genotype D was found to be the commonest genotype prevalent in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and there was no significant association between different HBV genotypes with ALT, HBsAg, HBeAg or viral load. HBV genotype E was detected in small percentage of cases.
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