ORIGINAL RESEARCH article Volume 16 - 2025 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2025.1706957 1 Introduction Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a major public health problem (GBD 2019 Hepatitis B Collaborators, 2022). Despite the widespread availability of an effective prophylactic vaccine, approximately 257 million people are living with HBV infection (Hsu et al., 2023). Therefore, there remains an urgent need to seek potential prevention and treatment strategies.
