title: A male patient with severe acute hepatitis who was domestically infected with a genotype H hepatitis B virus in Iwate, Japan.
abstract: Although all eight genotypes of hepatitis B virus (HBV) strains are circulating in Japan, no cases of acute hepatitis with foreign HBV strains of genotype H have thus far been reported in Japan. Here, we report a 35-year-old Japanese patient with severe acute hepatitis who was domestically infected with genotype H HBV. On admission, he had a high HBV load of 1.0 x 10(9) copies/ml, elevated levels of total bilirubin (7.0 mg/dl) and alanine aminotransferase (3606 IU/l), and reduced prothrombin activity of 39.0%. The HB-JAIW05 isolate obtained in the present study was composed of 3215 nucleotides and had the highest similarity of 99.7% with the reported genotype H HBV isolate recovered from a Japanese blood donor. The HB-JAIW05 isolate had neither precore (A1896) nor core promoter (T1762/A1764) mutations. However, upon comparison with the consensus sequence of ten reported HBV isolates of the same genotype, the HB-JAIW05 isolate had 17 nucleotide substitutions including five missense mutations in the P gene, which may be related to vigorous replication of HBV in this case. He had no history of traveling abroad, but had had extramarital sexual contact with two Japanese women living in Iwate, Japan, 2 weeks and 2 months before the disease onset, respectively. Our results suggest that rare HBV genotypes such as H may be spreading in Japan via sexual contact. Further molecular epidemiological studies on HBV to clarify the exact changing profiles of de novo HBV infection in Japan in relation to genotype and genomic variability are warranted.
authors.affiliation: First Department of Internal Medicine, Iwate Medical University, Iwate, Japan.
authors.forename: Ichiro
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kumagai
authors.forename: Koichi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Abe
authors.forename: Takayoshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Oikawa
authors.forename: Akihiro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sato
authors.forename: Shinichiro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sato
authors.forename: Ryujin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Endo
authors.forename: Yasuhiro
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Takikawa
authors.forename: Kazuyuki
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Suzuki
authors.forename: Tomoyuki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Masuda
authors.forename: Shigehiko
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sainokami
authors.forename: Kazunori
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Endo
authors.forename: Masaharu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Takahashi
authors.forename: Hiroaki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Okamoto
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D000328:Adult; D005838:Genotype; D006509:Hepatitis B / Q000635:transmission / Q000821:virology*; D006515:Hepatitis B virus / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D008297:Male; D012720:Severity of Illness Index