I appreciate your kind words, Peter. Thanks a lot!
Just to give some context, there are ways of seeing if this is a chronic infection or an acute exposure (that may resolve or turn chronic). The lab test is generally for anti-HBc IgM antibody - if this is positive, then you have only had the infection a short period of time.
I imagine the IV treatment includes HBIG - which is composed of antibodies against HBs (and the virus itself). The idea behind this is to stop any ongoing infection, while your immune system tries to fight it off (which is likely happening due to your high ALT levels). The entecavir would be to slow down the virus replication from any already infected cells. Entecavir can also normalise ALTs and stop you from going into liver failure (a possibility if your immune system becomes so engaged in killing infected cells that it kills off too much of your liver).
The treatment of an ACUTE infection with entecavir is different from treatment of a CHRONIC infection, which is where a lot of the confusion has come in. At the end of an acute infection, you will have seroconverted to anti-HBs (this is the definition of the end of an infection). Just like anyone else in this phase, you would be taken off of treatment. I guess the year long thing might be a conservative treatment to make sure the virus infection doesn’t come back.
With the knowledge you have provided, this seems like a reasonable treatment plan to keep you safe. 1 year is relatively short for being treated with entecavir; it’s a very safe drug and most people take it for years on end with few side-effects.
Cheers,
Thomas