Preliminary study on determination of specific cellular immunity of patients with hepatitis B / 中华实验和临床病毒学杂志

ABSTRACT

<p><b>BACKGROUND</b>To evaluate an enzyme linked immunospot (ELISPOT) method for testing the specific cellular immunity of patients with hepatitis B and preliminarily investigate into the difference of cellular immunity in patients with various types of hepatitis B.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>The patients with acute hepatitis B, chronic hepatitis B liver cirrhosis, healthy persons with HBV vaccine immunization, healthy persons with past HBV infection and HBV naive persons were enrolled in this study. Their peripheral blood mononuclear cells were tested by ELISPOT to determine the number of gamma-interferon secreting cells.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The number of gamma-interferon secreting cells was significantly different between the patients with acute hepatitis B and those with chronic hepatitis B, and between the patients with acute hepatitis B and those with liver cirrhosis (P=0.0209 and P=0.0211).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The specific cellular immunity in the patients with hepatitis B could be evaluated by determining the number of gamma-interferon secreting cells with the method of testing their peripheral blood mononuclear cells by ELISPOT. The specific cellular immunity was stronger in the patients with acute hepatitis B than in those with chronic hepatitis B and liver cirrhosis.</p>