%0 Journal Article %A Li, Jisu %A Tong, Shuping %A Vitvitski, Ludmila %A Zoulim, Fabien %A Trépo, Christian %T Rapid detection and further characterization of infection with hepatitis B virus variants containing a stop codon in the distal pre-C region %D 1990 %J Journal of General Virology, %V 71 %N 9 %P 1993-1998 %@ 1465-2099 %R https://doi.org/10.1099/0022-1317-71-9-1993 %I Microbiology Society, %X Recently, hepatitis B virus (HBV) replication in the absence of HBe antigenaemia has been attributed to HBV variants with a TAG stop codon in the distal pre-C region associated with one or two point mutations. We describe here a rapid detection method for the diagnosis of such HBeAg-negative HBV variants using selective oligonucleotide hybridization. The entire pre-C region was amplified by the polymerase chain reaction and hybridized under stringent conditions with non-mutated (M0), one (M1) and two (M2) point-mutated oligonucleotide probes. Of the 15 HBeAg-positive (group I) and 20 HBeAg-negative (group II) serum samples studied, 14 samples in group I and one sample in group II hybridized with M0 only and 18 samples in group II hybridized with M1 or M2, or both.The remaining two samples (from groups I and II, respectively) failed to hybridize with any of the three probes. DNA sequencing confirmed mixed distal pre-C sequences in samples hybridizing with more than one probe and also revealed novel mutations in the distal pre-C region of the two samples which failed to hybridize with any of the probes. The latter sample had a +2 frameshift and hence represented a new type of HBeAg-negative HBV variant. This method may therefore prove useful in the diagnosis of infections by HBeAg-negative HBV variants resulting from common mutations in the pre-C region, as well as for the identification of less common variants with novel mutations in the same region. %U https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/0022-1317-71-9-1993