RESEARCH ARTICLE Involvement of soluble sc suppression of T cell activ in

Full list of author information is available at the end of the articleBackground Hepatitis B is a serious and potentially life-threatening liver infection caused by the hepatitis B virus (HBV), which has become a major global health problem. About two billion people worldwide have been infected with the virus, and more than 350 million have chronic (long-term) infection [1]. Chronic infection with HBV can lead to severe liver diseases including advanced fi-brosis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), causing an estimated 600,000 deaths each year [2]. In pa-tients with chronic HBV infection, there is a reduction or functional exhaustion of HBV-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses compared with responses from individuals who succeed in resolving infection [3,4]. CD8+ T cells, the main effector cells in viral clearance of HBV, produce an array of cytokines, among which interfero