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. 1984 Oct;93(2):225–232. doi: 10.1017/s0022172400064743

Hepatitis B core antigen synthesised in Escherichia coli: its use for antibody screening in patients attending a clinic for sexually transmitted diseases.

B J Cohen, P A Litton, P P Mortimer, P Simmons
PMCID: PMC2129438  PMID: 6389696

Abstract

Hepatitis B core antigen (HBcAg) synthesised in Escherichia coli by recombinant DNA techniques was compared with HBcAg prepared from infected liver tissue. The two antigens were used in radioimmunoassays (RIA) to detect antibody to HBcAg (anti-HBc) in sera from patients attending a clinic for sexually transmitted diseases. Out of 2151 sera tested, 260 were anti-HBc positive with both HBcAg preparations but seven were positive with the liver-derived antigen alone. Reasons for these discrepant results are discussed. The slight loss of sensitivity of the anti-HBc RIA using E. coli HBcAg was not considered significant when compared with the potential advantages of a synthetic antigen. The presence of other hepatitis B markers in the 267 anti-HBc positive sera was determined: 25 contained HBsAg, 220 anti-HBs and, of the 22 that were HBsAg/anti-HBs negative, 12 contained anti-HBe. In the 10 remaining sera, anti-HBc was the only hepatitis B marker that could be found.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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