Analysis of T cell receptor V beta diversity in peripheral CD8(+) T lymphocytes in patients with hepatitis B infection

A case-control study was carried out to explore the clonality of the T cell receptor Vbeta repertoires in complementarity determining region 3 in CD8(+) T lymphocyte of patients infected with HBV. The enrollment included 20 patients and 20 healthy donors. Multiple PCR amplification was applied to amplify many pieces of the T cell receptor Vbeta gene in complementarity determining region 3. High resolution agarose gel electrophoresis was employed to detect the clonality. By statistics, the percentage of monoclonal TCR Vbeta9 and Vbeta14 in CD8(+) T cell in patients' group were significantly higher than those in normal controls, 70.0 % vs 25.0 %, 85.0 % vs 30.0 % (p<; 0.01). The results showed that persons infected with HBV have the cloning changes of the T cell receptor Vbeta repertoire in CD8(+) T cell.