I have seen in my practice that my patients on antiviral therapies are not contracting covid, wanted to know if other doctors or patients also experiencing the same? This seems to be a good hypothesis to test too. Also, I have seen trials using tenofovir and other hepb antivirals for curing covid.
Dr Sumaiya Petiwala
Registered Dietitian (RD)
Consulting Dietitian and Medical Nutritionist
General Physician (BUMS)
Dear Sumaiya,
There shouldn’t be any reason why Hep B antivirals would affect SARS-CoV2. Reverse transcriptase inhibitors (entecavir, tenofovir, adefovir, lamivudine, etc.) work by targeting the virus protein that converts RNA to DNA (which is necessary for HBV to produce more virus). But SARS-CoV2 does not do this (it replicates by converting RNA to more RNA, no DNA step), so these drugs won’t help.
Indeed, Hep B drugs have been tested and do nothing against the virus: https://aac.asm.org/content/65/1/e01652-20. The paper also looks at HCV and HIV drugs, which show similarly poor effects.
I also don’t think it has been the experience of other centres that Hep B patients have fewer cases of COVID19. Any @HealthExperts want to weigh in here?
Cheers,
Thomas
Hello Dr Sumaiya,
A lot of my very close family member including me and my mother are chronically infected with HEP B and are on antiviral medications for few years now.
Recently my father contracted Covid-19, followed by my 2 sisters but my mother didn’t. We conducted multiple RT- PCR tests to confirm.
My maternal aunt’s husband contracted Covid-19 and got pretty serious and has to be hospitalized but my aunt who is on tenofovir remained Covid-19 negative (confirmed by an RT-PCR test).
I’m also on Entecavir and never contracted Covid-19, although my case might not be relevant since I never came in contact with anyone who is Covid-19 positive (at least that I know of).
I’ve noticed few other similar events too.
I know these are only anecdotes but there seems to be a correlation between mentioned antivirals and Covid-19 and therefore the topic should be further explored by scientific community.
I have read this topic abit late but my contribution is worthy sharing.
I completely agree with Thomas ARV’S do nothing as far as COVID 19 is concerned.
This is informed by my personal experience.I am a husband and father to three young children,two boys(12yrs&4yrs old) and one girl (7months old).we live under the same roof and I am the only Hep b +ve and on treatment. My expectant wife was the first to be infected. Her’s was so severe that she was on oxygen for 7 days. My 4yrs son was second. His was manifested by otitis media and fever of 39.9°c.He was hospitalized for 5 days to bring the fevers down.My 12 years son and myself also contracted the deadly virus. We were both asymptomatic.Funny,I retested 3 times for two months and never tested -ve.
No much can be said than that anti Hep b drugs don’t protect anybody from covid 19.
Regards
Kinoti.
Hello all,
I’m on vemlidy and I recently got covid. I had two covid vaccines and a booster december of 2021. now it’s may/june 2022. antiviral meds did not help me from protection from covid.
Watch out for liver enzymes rising. My wife had covid. She recovered and then went for the yearly check up and her ast and alt were above the normal range.
Then went to and got another blood work done a month later and was back to normal.
Just fyi. If your going to get annual hepatitis b screening.
Hi catcher,
I and Thomas have argued in a different trend that ARVs have no consequences in covid 19. Remember,I contracted covid 19 despite being in ARVs.
Kinoti
Hi
I think your hypothesis is wrong since I contracted covid despite being on ARVs
Kinoti
A largish South Korean study have shown that hepatitis B patients on an antiviral catch COVID less often / show less symptoms (I’m not able to include the links for some reason, please remove the spaces):
search.bvsalud. org/global-literature-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/resource/en/covidwho-1450734
Association between chronic hepatitis B infection and COVID-19 outcomes: A Korean nationwide cohort study.
Underlying CHB and antiviral agents including tenofovir decreased susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection. HBV coinfection did not increase the risk of disease severity or lead to a worse prognosis in COVID-19.
Hi @mantana,
Thanks for sharing this paper: Association between chronic hepatitis B infection and COVID-19 outcomes: A Korean nationwide cohort study.
It is interesting, but I would caution any interpretation of the HBV antivirals directly improving SARSCoV2 infections. It may be something associated: the first that comes to mind is that people rich enough to be able to afford the antivirals also are rich enough to work jobs where they can avoid being exposed to the virus (or afford better health care in general so they survive better). I don’t think this has been controlled for.
Thomas
@mantana My hypothesis is that immune system with Hep B would not overreact to Covid-19 that much since it also fights HBV. So hepatitis B patients on an antiviral show less symptoms.