Annals of laboratory medicine
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Wisteria floribunda agglutinin-positive Mac-2 binding protein (WFA-M2BP) is a protein with altered glycosylation that reacts with lectin, and was recently identified as a useful non-invasive biomarker for the diagnosis of liver fibrosis in patients with hepatitis C virus infection.This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of WFA-M2BP for liver fibrosis in the context of hepatitis B virus (HBV). ⋯ WFA-M2BP can support a diagnosis of liver fibrosis with similar diagnostic efficacy to other biomarkers, and predicted liver fibrosis stage ≥2 among patients with chronic hepatitis B.
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We examined the feasibility of a full-length gene analysis for the drug resistance-related genes inhA, katG, rpoB, pncA, rpsL, embB, eis, and gyrA using ion semiconductor next-generation sequencing (NGS) and compared the results with those obtained from conventional phenotypic drug susceptibility testing (DST) in multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MDR-TB) isolates. ⋯ Ion semiconductor NGS could detect reported and novel amino acid changes in full coding regions of eight drug resistance-related genes. However, genotypic DST should be complemented and validated by phenotypic DSTs.