Infection by hepatitis B virus (HBV) is responsible for approximately 296 million chronic cases of hepatitis B, and roughly 880,000 deaths annually. The global burden of HBV is distributed unevenly, largely owing to the heterogeneous geographic distribution of its subtypes, each of which demonstrates different severity and responsiveness to antiviral therapy. It is therefore crucial to the global public health response to HBV that the spatiotemporal spread of each genotype is well characterized. In this study, we describe a collection of 133 newly-sequenced HBV strains from recent African immigrants upon their arrival in Belgium. We incorporate these sequences – all of which we determine to come from genotypes A, D, and E – into a large-scale phylogeographic study with genomes sampled across the globe. We focus on investigating the spatio-temporal processes shaping the evolutionary history of the three genotypes we observe. We incorporate several recently published ancient HBV genomes for genotypes A and D to aid our analysis. We show that different spatio-temporal processes underlie the A, D and E genotypes with the former two having originated in southeastern Asia, after which they spread across the world. The HBV E genotype is estimated to have originated in Africa, after which it spread to Europe and the Americas. Our results highlight the use of phylogeographic reconstruction as a tool to understand the recent spatiotemporal dynamics of HBV, and highlight the importance of supporting vulnerable populations in accordance with the needs presented by specific HBV genotypes.

中文翻译：

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当代和历史上的人类迁徙模式塑造了乙型肝炎病毒的多样性

乙型肝炎病毒 (HBV) 感染导致每年约 2.96 亿慢性乙型肝炎病例和约 88 万人死亡。乙型肝炎病毒的全球负担分布不均，很大程度上是由于其亚型的地理分布存在异质性，每种亚型的严重程度和抗病毒治疗的反应不同。因此，明确每种基因型的时空传播特征对于全球公共卫生应对乙型肝炎至关重要。在这项研究中，我们描述了 133 种新测序的 HBV 毒株，这些毒株来自新近到达比利时的非洲移民。我们将这些序列（我们确定所有这些序列都来自基因型 A、D 和 E）纳入一项大规模系统发育地理学研究，其中对全球基因组进行了采样。我们专注于研究塑造我们观察到的三种基因型进化历史的时空过程。我们整合了几个最近发表的 A 型和 D 型古代 HBV 基因组来帮助我们进行分析。我们表明，A、D 和 E 基因型背后存在不同的时空过程，前两者起源于东南亚，随后传播到世界各地。 HBV E基因型估计起源于非洲，随后传播到欧洲和美洲。我们的结果强调使用系统发育地理学重建作为了解乙肝病毒近期时空动态的工具，并强调根据特定乙肝病毒基因型的需求支持弱势群体的重要性。