Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a hepatotropic virus, that chronically infects some 300 million people worldwide and is thought to be responsible for a million deaths annually. Numerous HBV isolates have been grouped into eight genotypes, A through H, on the basis of sequence similarities of their complete genomes. HBV genotypes show a characteristic geographical distribution: genotype A is pandemic but most prevalent in northern Europe, North America and central Africa; genotypes B and C are found in eastern Asia, Korea, China, Japan, Polynesia and Vietnam; genotype D is also pandemic but is predominant in the Mediterranean area, the Middle East and India; genotype E is typical for Africa; genotype F is found in American natives and in Polynesia; genotype G in western Europe and North America and genotype H is found predominantly in Central America. Genotyping of HBV is important not only for molecular epidemiology purposes. Several recent researches demonstrated that rate of the chronic outcome and the severity of liver disease can be different for some genotypes.