Reply.
Ivana CareyGavin ClohertyGeoffrey DusheikoKosh AgarwalPublished in: Hepatology (Baltimore, Md.) (2021)
We thank Professor Chan for his interest in our paper(1). We agree that pgRNA and HBcrAg appear to be clinically informative markers of residual cccDNA transcriptional activity in HBeAg-negative patients receiving NA. As pointed out, we did not detect HBcrAg or pgRNA in serum in a minority of patients with detectable HBV DNA before therapy. PgRNA concentrations are lower than HBV DNA in treatment naïve patients, which may explain this dichotomy.