A 68-year-old man with occult hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection was diagnosed with malignant lymphoma and achieved complete remission after treatment with a chemotherapy regimen including rituximab for 5 months. Entecavir (ETV) was also used during and after chemotherapy and was ended at 14 months after chemotherapy. However, reactivation of HBV was observed in blood tests, which showed not onl...

Approximately 240 million people are chronically infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV), 75% of whom reside in Asia. Approximately 600000 of infected patients die each year due to HBV-related diseases or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The endemicity of hepatitis surface antigen in Indonesia is intermediate to high with a geographical difference. The risk of HBV infection is high in hemodialysis...

BACKGROUND In surface antigen of hepatitis B virus (HBsAg)-positive carrier for anticancer treatment of malignant lymphoma, it is well recognized that reactivation of hepatitis B virus (HBV) occasionally occurs. However, there have been only a few studies of HBV reactivation in serum HBsAg-negative and hepatitis B core antigen (HBcAb)-positive occult HBV carriers. We looked at both retrospectiv...

INTRODUCTION We aimed to evaluate the prevalence of "anti-HBc alone" among Syrian blood donors, highlighting the possibility of representing occult HBV infection. METHODOLOGY Sera of 3,896 healthy blood donors were tested for both HBsAg and anti-HBc. HBsAg-negative, anti-HBc-positive samples were further tested for the antibodies to HBsAg (anti-HBs), and "anti-HBc alone" sera were tested for ...

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is the most prevalent infectious agent that can induce severe liver disease. Patients infected with long-term HBV, including chronic, asymptomatic and occult forms, cannot clear HBV from infected hepatocytes completely. It is not clear why some people can clear the infection while others cannot. Furthermore, the main mechanisms responsible for progression of the infectio...

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is transmitted by parenteral, sexual and perinatal routes. While fulminant hepatitis may occur in 1% of cases of symptomatic acute hepatitis, the principal problem of HBV infection is that it may become chronic, classically defined by carriage of HB surface antigens (HBsAg) for more than 6 months. This occurs in only 0.5 to 3% of immunocompetent adults but more frequentl...

Universal infantile hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccination may lead to an increase in vaccine escape variants, which may pose a threat to the long-term success of massive vaccination. To determine the prevalence of occult infections in Korean vaccinated individuals, 87 vaccinated subjects were screened for the presence of HBV DNA using both the nested PCR protocol and the VERSANT HBV DNA 3.0 assay...

BACKGROUND Detection of hepatitis B virus (HBV) genomes without detectable hepatitis B surface antigen (HBs-Ag) is termed occult HBV infection (OHBV) that may be transmitted by blood transfusion or organ transplantation and has acute reactivation when an immunosuppressive status like human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection occurs. We aimed to evaluate OHBV in HIV-infected patients with iso...