REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Molecular Innate Immunity
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1611976
Anti-HBV Treatment Partially Restores the Dysfunction of Innate Immune Cells and Unconventional T cells During Chronic HBV Infection
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of infectious Disease, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China
- 2Institute of Infectious Diseases and Immunity, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
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Despite the successful implementation of prophylactic vaccines, hepatitis B virus (HBV) continues to affect over 350 million individuals globally. It remains a predominant etiology of end-stage liver pathologies, including liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). While nucleos(t)ide analog (NUC) therapies effectively suppress viral replication, functional cure is achieved in less than 1% of patients annually. Given that viral clearance fundamentally requires reconstitution of antiviral immunity, emerging therapeutic paradigms necessitate combinatorial strategies integrating direct-acting antiviral agents with immunomodulatory interventions. Substantial research efforts have been directed toward elucidating the immunological mechanisms underlying HBV persistence during chronic infection. This review systematically summarize the functional impairment of innate immune populations and unconventional T cell subsets across distinct clinical phases of chronic HBV infection, and characterizes longitudinal immune reconstitution patterns following antiviral treatments. Our review identifies potential immunological biomarkers and provides a mechanistic framework for developing targeted immunotherapies to achieve durable HBV control.
Keywords: Hepatitis B virus, Antiviral treatment, dendritic cell (DC), monocyte, Natural killer (Nk) cell, MAIT (mucosal-associated invariant T) cell, γδT cell, NKT (natural killer T) cell
Received: 15 Apr 2025; Accepted: 23 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shu, Li, Du and Zheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yanqin Du, Department of infectious Disease, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430022, Hubei Province, China
Xin Zheng, Department of infectious Disease, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430022, Hubei Province, China
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