Of these patients, 149 participated in the associated LTFU study.12 The study was conducted in accordance with the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and the principles of Good Clinical Practice. All patients gave written informed consent according to standards

of the local ethics committees. Serum HBsAg was quantified in samples taken at baseline, during the treatment period (weeks 4, 8, 12, 24, and 52) and during follow-up (week 78) using the ARCHITECT HBsAg assay (Abbott Laboratories; range 0.05-250 IU/mL).22 HBV DNA quantification for the initial study was performed with 4-week intervals using an in-house-developed TaqMan polymerase chain reaction assay (lower limit of quantification = 400 copies/mL) based on the EuroHep standard.23 For the LTFU Selleck INCB018424 study, HBV DNA was measured with the Cobas TaqMan HBV assay (Roche Molecular Systems, Branchburg, NJ), with a dynamic range of MG132 quantification of 174-6.4 × 108 copies/mL (30-1.1 × 108 IU/mL). It has previously been demonstrated that there is an excellent correlation between the two assays.12 HBeAg was assessed using enzyme immunoassay (AxSYM; Abbott Laboratories, Abbott Park, IL) or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (DiaSorin SpA, Saluggia, Italy). ALT was measured locally in accordance with standard procedures and is presented as multiples of the ULN. HBV genotype was assessed using the INNO-LiPA assay (Innogenetics). For the current study, a composite endpoint of HBeAg loss

and HBV DNA level <10,000 copies/mL was chosen for definition of response.24 Patients who were retreated after the initial study were considered nonresponders at LTFU. Associations between variables were tested using Student t test, chi-squared test, Pearson correlation, or their nonparametric equivalents when appropriate. The differences in HBsAg decline between treatment arms and (non)responders were analyzed using repeated measurement models with an unstructured covariance allowing heterogeneity across compared groups. Discrimination, or the ability of HBsAg concentration and decline at various time points to distinguish patients medchemexpress who will develop a response from those who will not, was quantified

by the area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (AUC). Our aim was to use on-treatment HBsAg levels to identify a stopping rule that would enable a clinician to discontinue patients who had a very low chance of response as early as possible, while maintaining >90% of responders on treatment. The optimal cutoff in HBsAg decline was identified using a grid-search of possible cutoff points at weeks 4, 8, 12, and 24. For each cutoff point, the chi-squared test was calculated together with the sensitivity and the negative predictive value (NPV). The highest chi-squared test identified the optimal cutoff point.25 SPSS, version 15.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL) and the SAS 9.2 program (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC) were used to perform statistical analyses.