The 2009 update of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) Practice Guidelines for Management of Chronic Hepatitis B are now posted online at www.aasld.org. This is the fourth version of this guideline; the last version was published in 2007.1 The key changes in the 2009 version are new recommendations for first-line and second-line antiviral agents. Since the last upda...

The purpose of this study was to analyze the cost-effectiveness of lamivudine (LMV), telbivudine (LdT), and entecavir (ETV) in treatment of chronic hepatitis B with adefovir dipivoxil (ADV) resistance. Two hundred and fifty-two patients were recruited and screened for resistance to ADV and randomly assigned into three groups: LMV + ADV, LdT + ADV, and ETV + ADV. The ratio of biochemical respons...

Four oral antiviral agents have been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B: lamivudine, adefovir, entecavir, and telbivudine. This article reviews the durability of response, dose regimen, predictors of response, safety, and problems with resistance of these four agents and of promising agents currently in phase III clinical tr...

There are several reports of Fanconi syndrome (FS) with or without nephrogenic diabetes insipidus (NDI) in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, treated with various antiretroviral medications like cidofovir, adefovir, didenosine and tenofovir. But neither FS nor NDI has been documented with abacavir therapy. We are reporting the first case of abacavir-induced reversible F...

AIMS This study aimed to assess the differential expression of specific B cell subtypes in patients with chronic viral hepatitis. METHODS The frequencies of differential expression of specific B cell subtypes in patients with chronic viral hepatitis and healthy controls were assessed by flow cytometry using monoclonal antibodies specific for CD38, CD27, CD86, CD95, TLR-9, and IgD. The effect ...

Liver transplantation is an excellent treatment for hepatitis B virus infected patients who have acute or chronic liver failure and/or primary liver cancer. Advances in antiviral prophylaxis prevent clinically significant graft re-infection for the majority of patients. Graft and patient survival has improved significantly during the past decade, and results of transplantation for hepatitis B v...

Patients with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection have a higher risk of developing liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Interferon-alpha, lamivudine and adefovir dipivoxil are the three approved treatment for chronic HBV infection and offers the only means of preventing the development of these complications. However, the efficacy of these agents, in terms of loss of Hepatitis B ...