Therapy of chronic hepatitis B: today and tomorrow

Rev Med Chir Soc Med Nat Iasi. 2003 Oct-Dec;107(4):689-98.

Abstract

Hepatitis B virus infection represents an important health problem all around the world, with almost 350 million people chronically infected and 1 million death per year. Despite an efficient vaccination program and despite therapeutic progresses, chronic hepatitis B is still a disease with severe evolution and an increased prevalence in many countries, including Romania. Today, we have two groups of drug that are used for chronic hepatitis B treatment: interferon and lamivudine. Unfortunately, long term results for interferon or lamivudine treatment are far from satisfactory, fact that explains the interest for new antiviral agents, which are under evaluation procedures in many clinical trials. A combination of two or more new antiviral action agents it is believed to be the optimum therapy of chronic hepatitis B in the future.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Antiviral Agents / therapeutic use
  • Drug Resistance, Viral
  • Drug Therapy, Combination
  • Hepatitis B Vaccines / administration & dosage
  • Hepatitis B, Chronic / drug therapy*
  • Hepatitis B, Chronic / prevention & control
  • Humans
  • Interferons / therapeutic use
  • Lamivudine / therapeutic use
  • Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors / therapeutic use
  • Treatment Outcome

Substances

  • Antiviral Agents
  • Hepatitis B Vaccines
  • Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors
  • Lamivudine
  • Interferons