Abstract: Objective To establish and assess the cut-off value for alanine aminotransferase(ALT), hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA and aspartate aminotransferase(AST) to diagnose hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) negative chronic active hepatitis B. Methods A total of 290 HBeAg negative chronic hepatitis B patients were enrolled and classified into 2 groups: active (213 cases) and inactive(77 cases) groups according to liver biopsy. The diagnosis significance for ALT, AST and HBV DNA load in HBeAg negative chronic active hepatitis B was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results The areas under ROC curve (AUC) for serum ALT, AST and HBV DNA load were 0.849, 0.807 and 0.867, respectively. For the cut-off values of 30 IU/L for male ALT and 19 IU/L for female ALT and HBV DNA load 1×10⁵ copies/mL, the sensitivity was 90.6%, the specificity was 98.7%, the positive predictive value was 99.5%, and the negative predictive value was 79.2%. The sensitivity of 77.0%, specificity of 63.3%, positive predictive value of 85.4% and negative predictive value of 50.0% were also observed for AST 40 IU/L as the cut-off value. Conclusions The 30 IU/L for male ALT and 19 IU/L for female ALT and HBV DNA load 1×10⁵ copies/mL are suggested to be the cut-off values for discriminating HBeAg negative chronic active hepatitis B.

Key words: Alanine aminotransferase, Aspartate aminotransferase, Hepatitis B virus deoxyribonucleic acid, Cut-off value, Chronic hepatitis B