Association of leukocyte telomere length with anti-HBsAg antibody titer in Hepatitis-B recovered patients from the Pakistani population.

OBJECTIVE: This study evaluates the leukocyte telomere length and its association with anti-HBsAg antibody titer among the hepatitis-B recovered subjects of the Pakistani population. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This was a retrospective cross-sectional study. In this study, 6414 subjects were screened for quantitative HBV-DNA through qPCR. Six hundred and sixty-eight subjects had a history of chronic hepatitis-B infection while at present they have no HBV-DNA in their blood samples. These subjects were screened for anti-HBsAg antibody through ELISA technique. Among them, 77 subjects developed anti-HBsAg antibody against HBsAg antigen. Of them, 61 subjects' leukocyte telomere length was analyzed through qPCR. In addition, normal healthy control subjects' (n = 18) leukocyte telomere length was also performed. RESULTS: The leukocyte Telomere length of chronic Hepatitis-B recovered patients were compared with normal healthy subjects. The mean and standard deviation of the peripheral blood leukocytes' telomere length of the Ct-values between patients and normal control subjects was 11.34 ± 4.12 and 14.79 ± 1.87, respectively. Similarly, the Ct-values for single copy reference gene were 20.03 ± 1.06 and 20.69 ± 0.611 between the chronic Hepatitis-B recovered patients and control subjects. A weak positive association was noted between anti-HBsAg antibody titer with Target/Single copy reference (T/S) ratio and number of base pairs (r = 0.2). In addition, a decline in anti-HBsAg antibody titer was observed with respect to the age of the subjects. There was no significant difference in number of base pairs between the male and female recovered patients. A significant difference between HBV recovered patients and normal control subjects was observed between the T/S ratio and number of base pairs (< 0.0001). CONCLUSION: A marked difference in the T/S ratio and number of base pairs was observed between the hepatitis-B recovered patients and normal control subjects. In chronic hepatitis-B recovered patients, the number of base pairs on each chromosome end were significantly higher as compared with normal control subjects. A weak positive correlation was noted between the T/S ratio and number of base pairs with anti-HBsAg antibody titer. This study shows that hepatitis-B recovered patients have maintained their higher telomere length as compared with the normal control subjects.