HBV A(1762)T, G(1764)A mutations constitute a valuable biomarker to identify a subset of male HBsAg carriers aged >30 yr at extremely high risk of HCC in Guangxi, and likely elsewhere.

The recent outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, China caused by the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) emphasizes the importance of detecting novel viruses and predicting their risks of infecting people. In this report, we introduced the VHP (Virus Host Prediction) to predict the potential hosts of viruses using deep learning algorithm. Our prediction suggests that 2019-nCoV has close infectivity with other human coronaviruses, especially the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), Bat SARS-like Coronaviruses and the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). Based on our prediction, compared to the Coronaviruses infecting other vertebrates, bat coronaviruses are assigned with more similar infectivity patterns with 2019-nCoVs. Furthermore, by comparing the infectivity patterns of all viruses hosted on vertebrates, we found mink viruses show a closer infectivity pattern to 2019-nCov. These consequences of infectivity pattern analysis illustrate that bat and mink may be two candidate reservoirs of 2019-nCov.These results warn us to beware of 2019-nCoV and guide us to further explore the properties and reservoir of it. One Sentence Summary: It is of great value to identify whether a newly discovered virus has the risk of infecting human. Guo et al. proposed a virus host prediction method based on deep learning to detect what kind of host a virus can infect with DNA sequence as input.

A matched nested case–control study of 33 paired cases and controls was conducted, based on a study cohort in Long An county, Guangxi, China, to determine whether infection with hepatitis B virus (HBV) with pre-S deletions is independently associated with the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), without the confounding effects of basal core promoter (BCP) double mutations. The prevalence of pre-S deletions was significantly higher in HCC (45.5 %, 15 of 33) than the controls (18.2 %, 6 of 33) (P<0.01), under the control of the influence of BCP double mutations. Most of the pre-S deletions occurred in, or involved, the 5′ half of the pre-S2 region and the difference between HCC (93.3 %, 14 of 15) and controls (66.7 %, four of six) was significant for this region (P=0.015). There was no significant difference in pre-S deletions between the BCP mutant group and BCP wild-type group (P>0.05), nor was the prevalence of pre-S deletions significantly different between genotypes B and C (P>0.1). These results suggest that pre-S deletions constitute an independent risk factor for HCC and their emergence and effect are independent of BCP mutations. The 5′ terminus of pre-S2 is the favoured site for the deletion mutations, especially in HCC cases. Further prospective studies are required to confirm the role of these mutations in the development of HCC.

Hepatitis B viruses (HBV) with core promoter mutations (A(1762)T, G(1764)A) were found in a previous study to be highly prevalent in patients from Guangxi, China with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The aim of this study was to determine whether the mutations are prevalent in areas of Guangxi with high and lower incidences of HCC and whether they are associated with other severe sequelae of chronic hepatitis B, including the development of cirrhosis. In addition, the genotypes of the various HBV sequences were determined. Core promoter mutations were significantly more common in HCC patients than asymptomatic carriers from both regions of Guangxi and also were common in patients with cirrhosis and chronic hepatitis. The data also support the hypothesis that genotype C HBV causes more severe liver disease than does genotype B.