INTRODUCTION THREAD: People affected by Hep B

[ThomasTu]

@Olawale96

Hello everyone, my name is Ismail from Nigeria, I discovered that I’m hep B positive in year 2020 after I noticed that I am having constant malaria, I used to donate blood before even I donated blood in year 2018 and I was okay then, the challenges I’m facing here is that the cost of getting to know your viral load and the likes here is too high and the great mistakes I made was that, I went for the test when I’m about to get marry, I’m hep b positive and my wife to be was negative and she got vaccinated but we didn’t wait for 6 months and I didn’t undergone any treatment before we wed and she’s now 4 months pregnant, I don’t know what to do next because I knew what I went through before I could convinced her to marry me then. Please I need your advice.

Dear @Olawale96,

Thanks for sharing your story with us and your difficult situation. The major risks as I see it are 1) your wife developing a chronic hep B; 2) the baby being exposed to Hep B. If 1) has not happened, then you have no risk of 2).

So, I think that your wife should get regular monitoring with blood tests to see if she has developed HBV infection. Depending on these results, different medical interventions would be recommended. It is also important that the baby get Hep B vaccinations as soon as possible (within hours of birth).

Perhaps some @HealthExperts can provide additional information for Ismail’s situation?

@ASYLAZ

Hello everyone,
I’m glad that I was accepted into the community.
I have chronic hb infection which was diagnosed 12yrs ago. I started treatment 6yrs ago and have achieved viral suppression. HBV DNA load has been consistently found to be undetected a year after I started the treatment.
At the beginning my doctor said I would have to treat the infection with Tenofovir for 2years. However, I’m currently in the 6th year since I commenced the treatment and he didn’t ask me to stop.
Recently, while I’m in Poland, I ran out of medication. It took me about 7 weeks to resume treatment due to unavailability of 300mg of Tenofovir in Poland. Thus, I had to import the drug from my country.
Now, I do experience some strange changes within me - I immediately get bloated after meal especially when eaten on a table. I was afraid if that could be the consequence of abrupt stop of the treatment. The combination of this strange experience and anxiety prompted me to go for a liver function test and HB DNA quantification (in progress). The result indicated normal levels of ALT, AST, Bilirubin and GGTP.
May I please appeal to our experts to respond to the following questions?

1. Is there a medical guidelines for stopping treatment?
2. Does body produce an antibody that fights the virus while treatment is on going?
3. Does treatment prevent the occurrence of liver cancer?
   4)when is it projected to develop a cure for chronic HB infection?
4. What is the side effects of Tenofovir?

Thank you

Dear @ASYLAZ,

Great to hear that you had achieved viral suppression and sorry to hear about your stressful experiences. Stopping and starting medication can throw your body out of balance, so just allow some time to readjust and stay in touch with your medical professional about any health concerns.

To answer your questions:

1. There are various guidelines from different organisations about when to stop treatment. Your doctor will know best how to interpret these. What is important though is that it can be dangerous: it should only be done after a discussion with your health professional and you need to be under careful monitoring afterwards to watch for any flares.

2. Yes, just as if you are not treated, the body can produce antibodies to fight the virus while on treatment, but does not happen often. A chronic infection is difficult for your body to fight fully.

3. Yes, treatment reduces the rate of cancer and liver disease over time.

4. There are hundreds/thousands of scientists working on a cure at the moment. We have a lot of possibilities under trial and examination now. It’s hard to know exactly when a cure will be developed, because we don’t know which will work and which won’t. We just have to wait until we see the results from these studies. Some other discussions about it are here: New Drugs to cure Hep B?; Is Cure coming in future?; VIDEO: Community Information on the Progress Towards a Hepatitis B Cure; Upcoming HBV treatments

5. For the majority of people, there are no side-effects for tenofovir. I myself have been on tenofovir for years and I have experienced no effects at all from it. There are some people who do report effects. There is a discussion here on them: Possible side-effects from antiviral therapy

Hope these help,
Thomas