BACKGROUND Entecavir is a potent nucleoside analogue for treating chronic hepatitis B (CHB). Quantitative hepatitis B surface antigen (qHBsAg) levels are predictive of response to interferon-α in CHB treatment; however, the clinical utility of qHBsAg in nucleoside/nucleotide analogue-based CHB therapy is not fully characterized. This study assessed changes in qHBsAg in patients treated with ent...

The treatment goal for patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) is reducing liver related mortalities from cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). For the past 20 years, single or combination regimen of nucleos(t)ide analogues (NUCs) has been widely used for this purpose and partly achieved the treatment goal in CHB patients. Hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-negative CHB has been regarded as ...

BACKGROUND Telbivudine has been suggested to induce hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) decline to the similar degree as pegylated interferon. We aimed to investigate whether telbivudine could further decrease HBsAg titer in patients who maintain undetectable serum hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA after initial entecavir treatment. METHODS In this open-label trial, patients who had serum HBsAg and...

BACKGROUND Nucleos(t)ide analogues reduce the incidence of hepatitis B virus (HBV) reactivation in cancer patients undergoing systemic cytotoxic chemotherapy but the experience of solid tumors remains limited. Aims. The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of entecavir and lamivudine in the prophylaxis of HBV reactivation in solid tumor patients undergoing systemic cytotoxic chemothera...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of different drug therapies for chronic hepatitis B in adult patients. METHODS Using a Markov model, a hypothetical cohort of 40 years for HBeAg-positive or HBeAg-negative patients was constructed. Adefovir, entecavir, tenofovir and lamivudine (with rescue therapy in cases of viral resistance) were compared for treating adult patients with chronic ...

The objective of this study is to validate the specific questionnaire for Hepatitis B HBQOL (Hepatitis Quality Life Instrument, version 1.0) Brazilian version, in addition testing its applicability patients with hepatitis under treatment and comparing quality life between using first-line drugs (tenofovir entecavir). For validation, back-translation technique was used a sample 47 patients. Fact...

BACKGROUND Complex mutants can be selected under sequential selective pressure by HBV therapy. To determine hepatitis B virus genomic evolution during antiviral therapy we characterized the HBV quasi-species in a patient who did no respond to therapy following lamivudine breakthrough for a period of 14 years. CASE PRESENTATION The polymerase and precore/core genes were amplified and sequenced...

For patients undergoing liver transplantation (LT) for hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related liver disease, the current standard of care for preventing reinfection of the allograft is nucleoside analogue therapy combined with hepatitis B immune globulin (HBIG). Entecavir has demonstrated high efficacy and a favorable safety profile for chronic hepatitis B (CHB) treatment, but data for patients underg...

BACKGROUND The combination of entecavir, a nucleoside analogue, and adefovir, a nucleotide analogue, would be a promising salvage treatment for chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients who fail nucleoside/nucleotide analogue (NA) regimens. METHODS A total of 89 CHB patients who had failed NA regimens and were treated with entecavir plus adefovir combination for at least 12 months were included. R...

BACKGROUND Entecavir therapy often reduces hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA to an undetectable level, but HBV DNA remain detectable in some patients. We investigated whether baseline HBV reverse transcriptase (rt) polymorphism and quasispecies complexity and diversity were associated with treatment response. METHODS Pretreatment HBV DNA levels, HBV rt sequence, serology, and quasispecies complexit...