Is hepatitis B antigen in cord blood an immunotolerogen playing a critical role in the pathogenesis of chronic hepatitis B?

Recently, we showed that infants with or without fetal hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) exposure had comparable antibody response to hepatitis B vaccination and proposed that fetal HBeAg exposure appears to not induce immunotolerance to HBV. Here, we summarized the different results on the topic of fetal HBeAg exposure in inducing immunotolerance to HBV nucleocapsid protein, and the evidence to back up that the tendency of high infection rate in...