Recently, hepatitis B core-related antigen (HBcrAg) has been suggested as an additional marker of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. This study aimed to investigate whether serum quantitative HBcrAg (qHBcrAg) was a satisfactory surrogate marker of intrahepatic covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA). A total of 139 patients with liver biopsy were enrolled, consisting of 59 patients in immune tolerance (IT) phase, 52 patients in immune clearance (IC) phase, 18 patients in low-replication (LR) phase, and 10 patients in reactivation phase. All patients in IC phase have received entecavir (ETV) therapy, and 32 of them undergone a second liver biopsy at 24 months. Among those patients, qHBcrAg was strongly correlated with intrahepatic cccDNA, which is superior to that of qHBsAg and HBV DNA. And similar findings were also observed in patients in IT, IC, LR and reactivation phases. Among the 32 ETV-treated patients with a second liver biopsy in IC phase, the decline of intrahepatic cccDNA was accompanied by changes in both qHBcrAg and qHBsAg. However, as compared to qHBsAg, the change of qHBcrAg was more strongly associated with intrahepatic cccDNA-decline. In summary, serum qHBcrAg should be a satisfactory surrogate of intrahepatic HBV cccDNA in CHB patients.

Both combination therapies led to a significant decrease in HBV DNA. HBeAg serological outcomes were higher with telbivudine plus ADV combination therapy.

A higher baseline intrahepatic HBV cccDNA level may increase the risk of liver inflammation. Further investigations will be required to validate HBV cccDNA as an intrahepatic virological marker of patients who require extended outpatient management.

Fever of unknown origin is a challenging diagnostic problem and the aim of this research was to analyze trends in the distribution of its causative diseases. This retrospective study makes a comparison between two different clinical series of patients from two different periods: 227 from period 1 (1998-2002) and 602 from period 2 (2008-2012). There were fewer infections (31.72% vs.16.45%) and more miscellaneous causes (5.29% vs. 13.12%) in the period 2 series, whereas no significant differences in autoimmune diseases, malignancies and undiagnosed cases were found. Adult onset Still's disease and lymphoma occupied the largest proportion in autoimmune diseases (75.00%) and malignancies (89.81%), respectively. Interestingly, the autoimmune diseases group, instead of infections, was found to be the leading category of the causative diseases in fever of unknown origin, which is contrary to previous reports. Further, adult onset Still's disease and lymphoma were suggested to be valued more highly in view of the large and rising proportions found in this study. These trends could support the diagnosis and treatment of fever of unknown origin better in the future.