Hello everyone in the forum.
I am very happy to reach you today since I heard this forum and fail at every trail. I am from South Sudan the youngest nation in Africa and 25 year by age. I was tested hepatitis B positive since last year on 3rd of April 2020. I went to a nearest Sudan for treatment or rescreening, the hepatitis B remain positive, I was told to do Viral load and it was 80 IU on August last year while Ultrasound and liver function test read normal. I was told by my Doctor you don’t have treatment now, that recommended IU for treatment is 2000 IU., then he told me come to this coming December. I need your advice as a team to live a full life and continue with my study without. I had really confused how did I got?
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Dear @Kuotosy,
Welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing your experiences.
To answer your question, the majority of Hep B is caused by small scratches and blood-to-blood transmission when you are very young (a baby). This could have occurred in very minor ways, for example during birth or as a scratch when you were playing as a young child. Many people will not know they have it until they get tested because hep B can hide from the body’s immune system very well.
Your viral load is very low, which means your body has responded against the virus and is suppressing it well. Your ultrasound results show that your liver is undamaged, meaning you are at low risk of liver disease. These are fantastic results and should not stop you from leading a full and productive life. The best way forward is to maintain monitoring to make sure everything stays stable and are kind to your body.
I hope this helps,
Thomas
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Hi Kuotosy,
Welcome to the Forum!
Thomas is right as usual. The most common means of catching HBV is blood contact from an infected person when you were very young, typically before 5 years old, often much younger. Other ways that people can catch the virus include unprotected sex, blood transfusions in areas where the blood supply is not consistently monitored (this is VERY rare in most of the world), and very occasionally sharing personal items with an infected person such as razors or toothbrushes that can have small amounts of blood on them.
There are very carefully written treatment guidelines for when a patient needs to go on drugs. You are not in the categories that need treatment, but you should be routinely monitored by your physician as things can change with time. Fortunately, there are 2 classes of drugs approved against HBV now that can work well (nucleos(t)ide analogs such as tenofovir and entecavir, and an immune modulator pegylated interferon alpha). All of them can provide major benefits to patients, and your doctor will go through their relative benefits with you if you eventually need to start therapy.
In short, with routine monitoring and possibly eventually treatment you can live a happy and full life. Other sections of HepBCommunity have long discussions of how to manage the social pressures that are associated with being HBV+, how to prevent accidentally spreading the virus to others, etc. I encourage you to read through those posts as they are very good.
I wish you the very best!
John
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