Association Between Negative Results From Tests for HBV DNA and RNA and Durability of Response After Discontinuation of Nucles(t)ide Analogue Therapy

BACKGROUND & AIMS: There is no satisfactory way to identify patients who will maintain a response after discontinuation of nuleos(t)ide analogue therapy for chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. We investigated whether patients with negative results from tests for HBV DNA and HBV RNA (double negative) at the end of treatment maintain a long-term response to treatment. METHODS: We performed a post-hoc analysis of data from a 2-year multi-center randomized controlled trial, and its long-term extension trials, on 130 patients with chronic HBV infection who were positive for the HB e antigen (HBeAg-positive; mean age, 30.8 +/- 6.9 years; 72.3% male) and received telbivudine with or without adefovir and stopped therapy after they had HBeAg seroconversion and levels of HBV DNA <300 copies/mL for at least 48 weeks (evaluation cohort). Clinical and laboratory assessments were made every 12 or 16 weeks until clinical relapse (defined as HBV DNA > 2000 IU/mL and level of alanine aminotransferase more than 2-fold the upper limit of normal) or until 4 years off treatment. We validated our findings in a cohort of 40 HBeAg-positive patients (36.5 +/- 9.4 years old; 72.5% male) treated with entecavir or tenofovir, and followed after discontinuation for up to 5.5 years. Patients were considered to be negative for HBV DNA if it was not detected in the COBAS Taqman assay. Patients were considered to be negative for HBV RNA if it was not detected by quantitative real-time PCR with 2 different pairs of primers. RESULTS: After 4 years off treatment, in the evaluation cohort, 30.8% of patients had a clinical relapse, 54.7% had virologic relapse (HBV DNA >2000 IU/mL in 2 tests), and 16.8% had reappearance of HBeAg in 2 tests (reversion). A significantly lower proportion of double negative patients had a clinical relapse 4 years later (2/35; 8.0%) than of patients who tested positive for either HBV DNA or RNA (32/102; 31.4%; P = .018). In the validation cohort, after 5.5 years of follow up, a lower proportion of double negative patients had clinical relapse (2/13; 15.4%) than of patients who tested positive for either HBV DNA or RNA at the end of treatment (9/27; 33.3%; P = .286) CONCLUSIONS: In an analysis of data from 2 independent cohorts, we associated negative results from tests for HBV DNA and RNA (double negative) at the end of treatment with continued response 4 or more years after discontinuation of therapy in HBeAg-positive patients. These results might be used to identify the best candidates for discontinuation of nuleos(t)ide analogue therapy.