Association of Preexisting Drug-Resistance Mutations and Treatment Failure in Hepatitis B Patients

The role of preexisting minority drug-resistance mutations in treatment failure has not been fully understood in chronic hepatitis B patients. To understand mechanisms of drug resistance, we analyzed drug-resistance mutations in 46 treatment-failure patients and in 29 treatment-naïve patients and determined linkage patterns of the drug-resistance mutations in individual viral genomes using a highly sensitive parallel allele-specific sequencing (PASS) method. Lamivudine resistance (LAMr) mutations were predominant in treatment-failure patients, irrespective of the inclusion of LAM in the regimen. The primary LAMr mutations M204V and M204I were detected in 100% and 30% of the treatment-failure patients, respectively. Two secondary LAMr mutations (L180M and V173L) were also found in most treatment-failure patients (87% and 78%, respectively). The linkages containing these three mutations dominated the resistant viruses. Importantly, minority LAMr mutations present in