Hep B Blog

Monthly Archives: November 2015

Liver Cancer, Living with Hepatitis B

Is Your Family Getting Together for the Holidays? Time to Discover Your Medical History

Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When we have chronic hepatitis B, knowing our family medical history can give us an inside edge to fight this infection.

Hepatitis B is an infection that often runs in families, and knowing how our parents or grandparents handled this liver disease can give us insider information about our own genetic prospects with hepatitis B.

Experts estimate that more than half of us worldwide became infected at birth. Our mothers may have been infected with hepatitis B and immunization, which can prevent infection if administered within 12 hours of birth, was not available to us as newborns, nor to our mothers or grandmothers. Continue reading "Is Your Family Getting Together for the Holidays? Time to Discover Your Medical History" →

Hepatitis B Advocacy, Hepatitis B Diagnosis & Monitoring, Hepatitis B Prevention, Hepatitis B Treatment, Liver Cancer

New Hepatitis B Treatment Guidelines Revealed at AASLD 2015 Conference

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The American Association for the Study of Liver Disease (AASLD), the organization that defines how doctors should treat hepatitis B and other liver ailments, unveiled new hepatitis B treatment guidelines this week at its annual conference in San Francisco.

The new guidelines are published here.  Patients should review them and discuss any updates that address their individual conditions with their physicians. Continue reading "New Hepatitis B Treatment Guidelines Revealed at AASLD 2015 Conference" →

Hepatitis B Diagnosis & Monitoring, Hepatitis B Prevention, Hepatitis B Treatment, Liver Cancer, Living with Hepatitis B

The Veterans Administration Ignores an Enemy on the Homefront: Hepatitis B

Courtesy of the U.S. Defense Health Agency.
Courtesy of the U.S. Defense Health Agency.

With Veterans Day comes reports about the lack of adequate mental health care for men and women returning from war. There is another, invisible health issue threatening veterans of all ages–hepatitis B.

Few veterans have ever been screened or treated for hepatitis B though their infection rate is four-times the national average.

The percentage of veterans infected with hepatitis B may actually be higher, but no one knows. Only 15 percent of U.S. veterans have ever been screened for hepatitis B. Among the few screened and diagnosed with chronic hepatitis B, only 25 percent have received antiviral treatment and only 13 percent have been screened for liver cancer. Continue reading "The Veterans Administration Ignores an Enemy on the Homefront: Hepatitis B" →

Living with Hepatitis B

The Annual Hepatitis B Check-up: Facing Mortality and a Missing History

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Image by worradmu, courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
Image by worradmu, courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

For more than 20 years, I have accompanied my daughter to her annual hepatitis B check-up with her liver specialist. She is 22 and does not need me to come, but I always go out of habit and love.

After the appointment, we sit eating lunch and I talk about how lucky she is that her liver has been healthy and her viral load undetectable for many years. Recently, she started testing negative for the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg). However, she has never developed hepatitis B surface antibodies. Her immune system has cleaned house, but has lacked the power to produce enough surface antibodies to show up on lab tests and declare her free of infection.

For the second year in a row, her doctor gave her a hepatitis B vaccine shot, an experiment to see if the injection of HBsAg would spur her immune system to generate enough surface antibodies to register in a lab test. Continue reading "The Annual Hepatitis B Check-up: Facing Mortality and a Missing History" →

Baruch S. Blumberg Institute