. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Dec 1.

Published in final edited form as: J Med Virol. 2012 Dec;84(12):1901–1906. doi: 10.1002/jmv.23419

TABLE IV.

Distribution of Amino Acid Substitutions Within MHR Between HBsAg+/Anti-HBs+Patients and HBsAg+/Anti-HBs-Patients

	Frequency of amino acid substitutions within MHR
Subregion of MHR	HBsAg+/anti-HBs+ patients Group III (n = 17)	HBsAg+/anti-HBs-patients Group IV (n = 58)	Fisher's exact test(P)
“a” determinant (%)	76.5	77.6	1.000
Subregion 1 (%)	29.4	37.9	0.579
Subregion 2 (%)	0.0	3.4	1.000
Subregion 3 (%)	70.6	63.8	0.774
Subregion 4 (%)	17.6	20.7	1.000
Subregion 5 (%)	17.6	0.0	0.010

For analysis, MHR of HBsAg was divided into subregions corresponding to structural and/or functional domains: subregion 1 (amino acid 100 to 120), subregion 2 (amino acid 121 to 123), subregion 3 (amino acid 124 to 137), subregion 4 (amino acid 138 to 147), and subregion 5 (amino acid 148–169) [Cooreman et al., 2001]. The “a” determinant region (amino acid 124 to 147) spans HBsAg subregion 3 and 4. Statistical significance was calculated using Fisher's exact-test.