A specific and sensitive radioimmunoprecipitation method was used to detect antibody against liver-specific membrane lipoprotein (LSP) in the sera of 182 patients with viral hepatitis, HBsAg chronic carriers and liver cirrhosis and 40 patients with other diseases as control. The results showed that the highest frequency of anti-LSP was noticed in the patients with severe hepatitis (15 out of 16 cases, 93.8%), and in the patients with chronic active hepatitis, acute viral hepatitis, chronic persistent hepatitis, cirrhosis and other diseases and in the HBsAg chronic carriers the incidences were 83.6%(41/49 cases), 66.2% (43/65), 63.6%(14/22), 55.0%(11/20), 5%(2/40) and 10%(1/10) respectively. The frequencies of anti-LSP in the patients with various types of viral hepatitis were significantly higher than those in the HBsAg chronic carriers and in the patients with other diseases (P