Age may be a factor in battling the hepatitis B virus (HBV), researchers from National Taiwan University’s College of Medicine said yesterday.
Why a majority of adults infected with the virus are able to fight off the virus, while most infected newborns and toddlers end up developing a chronic hepatitis B infection has long baffled doctors and scientists.
Graduate Institute of Clinical Medicine associate professor Wang Hurng-yi (王弘毅), one of the authors of the research, said nearly 95 percent of adult-acquired hepatitis B infections lead to spontaneous clearance, while more than 90 percent of infected newborns and about 30 percent of infected children aged between one and five years old are unable to fight off the virus and subsequently develop a chronic infection.
“These statistics suggest that a person’s immune clearance of hepatitis B — which has affected nearly 2 billion people worldwide — is heavily age-related. However, as the reason for this remains unknown, our research team has made it its mission to find an answer,” Wang told a press conference in Taipei.
As a baby’s postnatal gut microbiota is not established until a toddler is two or three years old, the researchers presumed that gut commensals might be mainly responsible for preparing the liver’s immune system to fight the hepatitis B virus.
To prove this hypothesis, the researchers injected the virus into mice that ranged from from six-to-12 weeks old. They discovered that adult mice were able to clear the hepatitis B virus within six weeks after the injection, while their young remained hepatitis B virus-positive even after 26 weeks.
“We laced the drinking water of mice aged between five weeks and 12 weeks old with an antibiotic to have them gut-sterilized, resulting in a noticeable reduction in the level of gut bacteria DNA in stools,” Wang said.
Although the amount of stool bacteria in mice given antibiotics returned to normal shortly after antibiotic treatment ended, they were unable to clear the hepatitis B virus after they matured, Wang said.
The researchers also found that mice with the toll-like 4 receptor (TLR4) mutation were able to fight off the hepatitis B virus regardless of their age, offering a potential new treatment for neonates infected with hepatitis B at birth.
Chen Ding-shinn (陳定信), a hepatitis specialist and former head of the university’s College of Medicine, said more than half of the hepatitis B carriers in Taiwan caught the virus from their infected mothers during delivery.
“The link discovered between TLR4 deficiency in mice and the ability to clear HBV could be a giant step forward in finding ways to break the cycle of mother-to-newborn infection,” Chen said.
The research was published in the online version of the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday.
Taipei police today said they have launched an investigation into a well-known Pokemon Trading Card Game store in Taipei's Ximending (西門町) area after its sudden closure, with customers suspecting the owner absconded with up to NT$300 million (US$9.24 million). Little Sheep Card Shop (小羊卡牌社) in Wanhua District (萬華) — which specializes in card purchases and pre-orders, card grading services in Japan, submissions to the US and consignment sales — opened a physical storefront in January. Its three official Line groups, hosting up to 5,000 members each, and social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram all disappeared overnight, with the Ximending
Typhoon Dolphin could bring heavy rain to northern Taiwan later this week if it tracks closer to the nation after passing the Ryukyu Islands, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. The CWA said forecast models agree the storm is to move toward the Ryukyu Islands through Thursday, but diverge over its path after that. One scenario has Typhoon Dolphin passing north of Taiwan, while another has it curving toward the Korean Peninsula if the Pacific high pressure system currently over the East China Sea and Taiwan weakens. Because of the uncertainty, it is still too
Typhoon Dolphin is expected to enter the East China Sea on Saturday and intensify rainfall in western regions over the weekend as the typhoon’s outer circulation sweeps across the sea north of Taiwan, independent meteorologist Daniel Wu (吳德榮) said today. The eastern coast should prepare for extreme heat caused by downslope winds over the weekend, while southwesterly winds from Monday would bring localized heavy rain to the southwest, he said. As Typhoon Dolphin’s outer bands move past northern Taiwan over the next couple of days, northern, central and southern areas would experience showers tomorrow, he said. Rainfall over the weekend would lead to
Taiwan could issue a sea warning for Typhoon Dolphin as early as Friday afternoon if the storm maintains its current westward track, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the center of the typhoon was about 2,590km east of Taipei and moving west at 21kph, potentially bringing hazardous conditions to waters surrounding Taiwan by Saturday. Dolphin is expected to reach waters south of the Ryukyu Islands around Saturday, but its track beyond that remains highly uncertain, CWA forecaster Lin Ping-yu (林秉煜) said. The typhoon could either continue moving westward or veer northward, Lin said. A westward track would bring
RSS