Dear Editor,
I read with great interest the editorial paper by Oh and Sinn [1] entitled “Is liver biopsy mandatory to identify immunetolerant phase of chronic hepatitis B?” published online ahead of print. In their paper, Oh and Sinn [1] suggested that the status of patients presumed to be in the immune-tolerant phase without histological information should be carefully evaluated. I would like to draw attention to the following printing error related to the normal serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels according to the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease (AASLD) guidelines. The recommended normal serum ALT level for males was incorrectly written as “<33 U/L” in both the text and Table 1. However, according to the AASLD 2018 hepatitis B guidance [2], the upper limit of normal for ALT in males is 35 U/L.
I believe that correcting this printing error will prevent any possible confusion in daily practice guiding management decisions.
Abbreviations
- ALT
alanine aminotransferase
- AASLD
American Association for the Study of Liver Disease
Footnotes
Conflicts of Interest
The authors have no conflicts to disclose.
REFERENCES
- 1.Oh JH, Sinn DH. Is liver biopsy essential to identifying the immune tolerant phase of chronic hepatitis B? Clin Mol Hepatol. 2023;29:367–370. doi: 10.3350/cmh.2023.0054. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 2.Terrault NA, Lok ASF, McMahon BJ, Chang KM, Hwang JP, Jonas MM, et al. Update on prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of chronic hepatitis B: AASLD 2018 hepatitis B guidance. Hepatology. 2018;67:1560–1599. doi: 10.1002/hep.29800. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]