Thanks for these replies, we only can hope for the best then.
I hope to meet a specialist soon.
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Hi @Adedeji_Joseph,
I want to echo both Thomas’ and Andrew’s comments. Although you have an active infection that is likely at high levels (but not certainly until the DNA test is done), there are good medications out there. The most common are tenofovir (it comes in 2 forms, TDF and TAF, most folks start with TDF as it is much cheaper and works well in the large majority of people) and entecavir. Speak with your doctor about which is best in your case. Also, encourage your loved ones to be tested for HBV, and if they are not HBV+, encourage them to be vaccinated.
Although it is natural to wonder how you became infected, it is best now to focus on how best to move forward. With good care, HBV is a quite manageable condition. Also, treatment options are likely to improve relatively soon because the scientific community, including Andrew, Thomas, and me among a great many others, is working really hard to improve therapy even more.
I wish you the very best!
John.
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Thomas, Thank you for creating the forum. This is great place we can share our situation freely. I got HepB when I was about 22 years old in China. That was terrible experience. I will share more detail once I have time. I was hospitalized for about a month and my HbsAg was cleared. I continued to have HbsAg tested in the following few months and HbsAg was always negative, but I still felt terrible weak. Then I stopped having my HbsAg tested. After a couple years, I got really sick again and of course my HbsAg was positive again and since then. I came to the United State more than 25 years ago. I always have my hepB test each year and HBV DNA level was low. About five years ago, my HBV DNA level started escalated and I decided to take Viread and followed by Vimlidy. Now I feel much healthy.
As we all wished, we could clear the hepB by ourselves. I have all my family members tested. My mon, brother and sister all have hepB antibody. My sister-in-law and my brother-in-law have hepB HbsAg positive. My nephews have HbsAg positive also. So I don’t think I got my HbsAg when I was born. Most likely I got it when I was vaccinated with multiple-use needles when I was boy.
A couple months ago, I got Covid-19 and my temperature was as high as 40C for two days. And I refused to take any tylenol or mortrin. After I got HepB 30 years ago, I have never had any fever. I wanted to use this opportunity to clear my hepB. The theory is simple. Fever means immune system fighting hard. I wish that when my immune system fought the Covid-19, it would also kill and clear my hepB. After I recovered from Covid-19, I started having hives on my whole body and had to go to urgent care. Initially I refused to take any allergy medicine again until I could not tolerate. Again the theory is simple. Allergy means my immune system overreacting. I hoped my immune system had cleared my hepB and then overreacted. I will go to have my HbsAg test to see my theory is correct.
I am newly registered although have been following the site in the last month.i was diagnosed in 2017 while trying to donate blood .I had regular follow up until last year. Although ALT and AST kept going up from normal to a little above normal. HBV DNA viral load done a year ago was 250iu/ml, uss done was essentially normal except that I had fatty liver. Since that time I didn’t go for check up.
I noticed a some days ago that I was having pains in the right side of the upper abdomen, ribs and back, although pain isn’t constant.
I am scared that my status has possibly progressed to something worse.
Since the beginning of the year I have been unwell even after treating malaria which is what is currently happening to me.
I have seen a doctor, I have been scheduled for LFT on Monday and abdominal uss on Wednesday.
I am so scared right now because I am still very young, I didn’t know it could progress so fast with the values I had a year ago
I have been watching out for other symptoms like yellowness of the eyes, my urine has always been yellow in colour but I noticed yesterday that it’s deeper. I have always had body itching which comes and goes
Dear @Dan,
Thank you for sharing your story and experiences. It’s great that you felt healthy after starting anti-HBV medication.
Regarding your use of COVID 19 or allergies to fight Hep B, though I can see how it might make sense, the immune system is actually much more complicated than this. The immune system is actually very specific and a reaction against one pathogen usually doesn’t change the reaction against another one. In Hep B in particular, people with chronic HBV infection don’t seem to fare any better or worse against the common cold, or any number of other diseases.
Basically (and happy to be corrected by @ScienceExperts in the immunology field), the immune system of people with chronic infection basically sees the virus as “self”. Just as you don’t (usually) raise an immune response against your own skin, muscles, or brain, the body makes sure not to fight off the Hep B. When you do have an immune response against Hep B, it’s usually only against one part of the virus (e.g. HBeAg), then the virus adapts to HBeAg-negative to avoid it.
The point is, you’re very unlikely to raise the anti-Hep B response by subjecting yourself to fever and hives. You should take your doctor’s advice and take the appropriate medication when necessary. In particular, fever can be deadly if it goes up too high. Please look after yourself!
Dear @Tsbs,
Thank you also for sharing your story here and sorry to hear about your symptoms. That’s a great plan to get your LFTs and US done to find out what’s going on. You’re doing the best you can and you should be proud of that. This is easier said than done, but there’s no benefit from borrowing worry from tomorrow. You have done what you can do now.
For your information as well, there are many other reasons for deeper yellow urine. Probably the most common one is dehydration or not drinking enough water. No need to go crazy with drinking litres and litres, but just ensure that you are drinking when thirsty (your body almost always does a pretty good job at telling you, you just need to listen to it).
There are also other reasons for abdomen pain as well (e.g. as discussed in Upper right quadrant pain, I am feeling a sharp pin pain in my stomach. Why am I feel thay, and Titling feet and pain on the righ shoulder blade), so don’t necessarily take this as a bad sign.
Hope this helps.
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Super important to know anti-HBc on all patients, contacts, family members
Anti-HBc = exposure = cccDNA even if anti-HBs is positive and can be used to talk about exposure and risks and timing
There is no natural immunity to HBV
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Hi everyone,
I am Habib Wardak from Afghanistan a chronic Hep B carrier. I am 44. I was diagnosed back in 2013 by that time my viral load was very high i.e million copies/ml. Then my doctor put me on lamivudine and after six months the viral load was “undetectable”. Then the doctor switched me to Entecavir and my viral DNA is “undetectable” since then.
I am feeling a little discomfort at the upper right side of my abdominal and sometime I can feel it at the upper right side of my back as well. I also feel tired most of the time. In 2019, doctor told me that I have also a grade 2 fibrosis but he wasn’t sure if this was the caused of hep b virus or the extra lbs I carry, he said if I lose about 10% of my weight it will be reversed either way, so I threw out about 20 Kg within one year ( it was hard but doable).
The main problem for me here in our country is that, its very hard to find a qualified doctor who can assess your condition in the right way. The lab results here are also very less trusty, they are always different from each other. In the past years, I was able to travel to India once a year to monitor my liver and other organs that may effect by the hep b virus but since August last year, I have not been able to travel out.
A quick question, I am taking Entecavir one 0.5 mg pill at 10 pm each night but now would like to switch it to a day like at 10 am, would this make a problem?
At the end, I am really glade that I have joined this great community as I find answers for so many questions that I had before after reading the available posts on this web - thank you to all the contributes! Thank you for developing of this excellent initiative and for accepting me to be part of this great community.
Thanks,
Hi wardak
Please feel most welcomed in our community. I must salute you for how hard you have fought the infection since 2013 when you were first diagnosed.
I wish you all the best and hope you find the support you need in this community.
Regards
Kinoti
Dear @wardak,
Welcome to the community and thank you for sharing your story.
To answer your question, switching time when you take your pill like this should be no problem.
Cheers,
Thomas
Hi im from in iraq i worked lawyer I discovered that I had hepatitis B virus in the year 2020, I was in shock then I told my close friends and they did not feel any kind of discrimination and since then I had removed the idea of marriage until it appeared. Treatment or recovery, and I was lost for two years, living a normal life, but the circumstances were that I proposed to a girl, and the girl of my dreams was convinced and happy that I would become her husband, but when I told her that I had the virus, she left me, it was a very sad story for me. From pain and oppression, I discovered that life must go on, and that I must seek treatment with the help of God first.
Hi hassanein
Sorry for the experience you had when you first discovered you had hep b virus. It is very depressing to be abandoned by your sweetheart when you discovered your positivity and needed somebody to stand with you. Quite a good number of people have walked down a similar path. I am happy you learnt to cope with the loss and the un expected news quickly. This is remarkable as it gave you an opportunity to fight the virus hard and live positively.
Your story definitely is encouraging to everyone.How I pray those going through a similar experience will have an opportunity to see and read your story.
As I welcome you in this community, I pray you find our support worthwhile.
Regards
Kinoti.
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Dear Hassanein,
I am very sorry to hear of your difficulties. Hopefully you can find support as you go through this trying period through the HepB Community. It is truly a world-wide community of HBV+ people, caregivers, medical professionals, and scientists. Everyone here has a common goal: to reduce the impact of HBV on people’s lives.
There is a lot of information in the various posts about people dealing with how HBV affects romantic relationships and marriage, and about how to have a loving relationship while protecting your loved ones from HBV. Many of our HBV+ members have healthy, happy families. I hope our community’s experiences can help you too make the accommodations needed to make it happen for you too!
You are among friends, and I wish you the very best!
John.
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Dear @HASANAIN_GALIL_KDHIM,
I join the others here in sympathy for your experiences. We have had others experience similar things here, but we also have had others find accepting partners who have gone on to start relationships while living with Hepatitis B. I myself am lucky enough to be one of those, and have been married to my HBV-negative wife for 7 years now (our anniversary was yesterday).
Please see some of the discussions we’ve had on this topic here: Dealing with the diagnosis in a relationship, When/how to disclose hep b in a potential relationship?, and Wish I didn’t know I was hepb positive before marriage.
I hope you can maintain hope and strength in your outlook in life and know that you are not alone.
Yours sincerely,
Thomas
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Hi @ Kinoti,
Thank you so much!
I am very happy that I have found and joined this wonderful community where people can share their actual experiences.
Best regards,
Wardak
Hi first time posting here. I learned 20 years that i am a chronic hep b carrier on a routine blood test for work. I got tested and if remember correctly I was told that i am a healthy carrier because there’s 1 in the test that i am positive( some kind of antibody). Anyway after 10 years I did another test and i was told the same with the viral load very low. My liver panel and afp also in normal leverls. US also normal. Unfortunately all my test from the past are now lost. Now, for the past 2 years i been getting regular blood test and US. My liver panel and afp are normal in the past 2 checks and ultra sound as well are normal. There also comment that liver appears to have regular and smooth contours. No abnormality.
However i got concerned that the viral load have gone up from 7000 iu/ml to 16500 iu/ml. Is this a cause of concern? Should i start taking antiviral? Thank you.
Dear @Michael1980,
Welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing your story. It is difficult to provide a judgement about if it is a concern and whether you should start taking antivirals without the full HBV blood panel tests. It would probably be best to contact your doctor about this and try to see a hepatologist if you can.
Thomas
