Any help would be appreciated. I am being told this is very rare. Seems like I have antibodies against Hep B now?
HBsAg Screen - Negative
Hepatitis B Surf Ab Quant (Labcorp) 16.8 mIU/mL - Immunity>9.9 mIU/mLImmunity>9.9 mIU/mL
HBV IU/mL (Labcorp)HBV DNA not detected
If my assumption is correct can HBsAG become positive again later?
Dear @wanttoknow,
Yes, from these results, it would appear that you have cleared the infection. Congratulations!
It is rare, but yes you can have a reactivation of the infection. This is of particular risk if you become immunocompromised (e.g. if you have a transplant and you need to be on immunosuppressants). This can be managed through prophylactic antiviral treatment.
Hope this helps,
Thomas
Do you know approx percentage of people this happens to? How long do I monitor HBsAg etc?
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Reactivation of HBV in the absence of immunosuppression in people with decent anti-HBs titers is so extremely rare that I’ve never seen any numbers assigned to it.
If I remember correctly from info I was given many years ago, HBV will spontaneously clear in a few percent of chronically infected people every year. The number I remember is about 4%, but that seems high to me so perhaps the data I’m remembering are out of date.
John.
Hi hopetoknow
Congratulations. Move on.
Regards
Kinoti
I agree with @john.tavis here that it is extremely rare in normal cases and you would not need ongoing monitoring of your HBsAg. It only should be kept in mind in the rare case that you are undergoing immunosuppressive therapy or having long-term steroid use.
Thomas
Congrats, live a healthy life style (sleep enough, exercise, eat well etc) just to ensure it stays so.
3 posts were merged into an existing topic: INTRODUCTION THREAD: People affected by Hep B
Congratulation!
I had my HbsAg negative from postive and stayed negative for a while 30 years ago. But I have never had HbsAb detected as positive. Now my HbsAg positive again.
Congratulation @wanttoknow ,
I strongly believe in science and in medical treatments…but I am equally sure that the cure is also in natural things (aliments,herbals,state of mind).
Can you tell us if you consumed any specific aliment daily?..or did you had any specific routine?..maybe meditation?
Maybe the cure consists in a connection between our mind and our body and maybe you have a tips or trick that will help your rare case become frequent.
Thank you and I wish you a healthy life !
Hi,
Congratulations on your condition. It would be wonderful to share your summary on your story on how you manage this disease including treatment, monitor, diet and life style change.
I hope one days most of us would be cured too.
Thank
Congratulations! I pray it stays that way for you!
Wow, wish this can be my case someday. I’m not an expert, but I believe you will get proper guidance here.
Did you get vaccinated when your HBsAg dropped to 0?
I’ve seen some debate about whether or not people with isolated anti-HBc (cleared HBsAg, did not develop anti-HBs) would benefit from vaccination. I’m not sure what the consensus is though.
My understanding is that there is no consensus yet too.
@ThomasTu I was also wondering if there’s any chance that the vaccine could cause reactivation of hepatitis B for someone who was previously infected? I know there’s no chance that the vaccine could give HBV to a person who never had it before, because the vaccine doesn’t contain any HBV DNA, but HBcAb+ people have a latent reservoir of cccDNA in our livers. Could the introduction of HBsAg (from the vaccine) enable the inactivated cccDNA to start churning out functional virions again?
Hi @et5656,
Patients with active or past infections won’t benefit from the HBV vaccine. However, some studies have shown that in people who do not have HBV, the vaccine can induce transiently positive or false-positive HBsAg results lasting up to 18 days or more in some people. This then changes to negative in everyone. They use yeast or some mammalian cells in the HBV vaccine, which triggers our immune system to produce antibodies. You are right in pointing out that they do not contain live HBV virus.
I did not find any studies on this topic in individuals with current or past infections. Could that mean that such issues do not occur? I don’t know. This is an interesting question, but I doubt it occurs because I am not aware of any HBV vaccine recommendation for people with current or past infections.
Hi @Bansah1 ,
Certainly there’s no clinical benefit of the HBV vaccine for someone who is HBsAg+, but I have heard that getting the vaccine can boost anti-HBs titers in people who have recovered from HBV infection. There are some people out there who think that boosting these people whose antibodies have waned (or cleared HBs without seroconversion) would reduce the risk of reactivation. There are others who think it wouldn’t really do anything.
What I’m wondering is whether there is any potential for reactivation when getting the vaccine to attempt to boost antibodies. I haven’t heard of this before, but the vaccine does contain HBsAg, which is why it can cause people to temporarily test positive, even if they’ve never had HBV before. So is it possible that the body could start using HBsAg from the vaccine to create infectious virus again? Maybe we don’t have human studies on this, but animal models might give us some clues.
That’s interesting. Points well taken.