— Introduction: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is one of the major global health problems, being one of the leading causes of acute and chronic Hepatitis B, Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) and Liver Cirrhosis (LC). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than one-third of the entire world population has been infected with HBV; about 5% are chronic carriers of this infection and approximately 25% of infected people develop a liver disease such as LC and HCC.
— Patients and Methods: Identifying the molecular mechanisms of cell-virus interaction is critical to understand and predict the risk factors for cancer. To accomplish this goal, this study focuses on Enhancer of Zeste Homologue 2 (EZH2). EZH2 is a catalytic subunit of Polycomb Repressive Complex 2, which catalyzes the addition of methyl groups to lysine 27 of the N-tail of histone H3. Furthermore, EZH2 can be considered as a tumor marker in breast and prostate cancers. High levels of EZH2 are correlated with metastatic cells and unfavorable diagnosis. In this work, we evaluate the gene expression of EZH2 from blood samples of HBV patients.
— Results: Preliminary results showed an increase of gene expression of EZH2 in HBV patients treated pharmacologically with nucleotide analogues.
– Conclusions: These encouraging preliminary results are of importance to further study the molecular mechanisms of HBV-related liver disease, up to HCC. The potential role of EZH2 in liver tissue damage, remodeling and regeneration need to be explored in further investigations.