Abstract

More than 350 million people are infected with Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) globally. The main aim of any chronic hepatitis B therapy is to prevent liver cirrhosis and its sequelae, including Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC). This is a cross sectional study that analysed medical records of 281 HBsAg seropositive patients in order to determine those factors that are associated with the reduction in the HBV viral load and the duration of HBV lamivudine monotherapy in order to attain a virological response. HBsAg patients in this study received the reverse transcriptase inhibitor drug lamivudine (100 mg/day). For this study, all HBsAg treatment naïve patients had baseline HBV levels between 200 and 104 copies/Ml. Age and duration of antiviral treatment were negatively correlated -0.11 (p = 0.07). Female patients, patients aged between 30-39 yrs and 40-49 yrs, delay in seeking HBsAg antiviral monotherapy following the appearance of initial symptoms, and all patients excluding those who are uneducated were significantly associated with the likelihood of having a mean HBV viral load in the plasma of 5log10 decline one-year after the initiation of lamivudine monotherapy irrespective of the presence of detectable HBV DNA. Findings from this study shows that HBsAg treatment naïve patients who started lamivudine monotherapy early following the initial appearance of HBV symptoms were associated with a viral load decline of 5log10 in plasma irrespective of the presence of detectable HBV DNA within one year after the commencement of lamivudine treatment compared to HBV treatment naïve patient who started treatment late.

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