Differences in delta virus hepatitis diagnosis methods and its effect on the hepatitis D prevalence

We thank H Wedemeyer and F Negro for their critical commentary about our article.1 The authors acknowledge that the global disease burden of hepatitis D virus (HDV) is higher than previously estimated. However, they emphasised limitation of this systematic review and meta-analysis that about one-third of anti-HDV-positive patients can have undetectable HDV RNA levels and the global disease burden estimated by only anti-HDV-positivity rate might not reflect the true prevalence of HDV.2 We agree with the authors that synchronous detection of anti-HDV antibodies and HDV RNA is necessary to diagnose the …