The presence of hepatitis B ‘e’ antigen (HBeAg) and its antibody (anti-HBe) was
evaluated by radioimmunoassay (RIA) in various groups of HBsAg-positive patients.
HBeAg was present in the majority of the sera from patients with acute viral hepatitis at the
onset of clinical symptoms and disappeared after 1 year. Almost all hemodialysis patients
had HBeAg in their sera. 40% of the patients who had chronic active hepatitis and 50% with
chronic persistent hepatitis had HBeAg with no relationship to the inflammatory activity of
the disease evaluated by the presence of mononuclear infiltration in liver biopsy. The
comparison between the presence of HBeAg and Dane particle-associated DNA-polymerase
activity showed that HBeAg was consistently found in almost all the sera which
presented DNA-polymerase activity. HBeAg, as determined by RIA, may therefore be
useful in the screening of highly infective patients with elevated viral replication.
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