STD HEPATITIS B SYMTOMS: CARRIERS

Date: Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 4:47 am

Carriers. Although 95 percent of people who are infected with hepatitis B go on to clear the infection and then have lifelong protection against ever becoming infected again, about 5 percent of them become carriers. A carrier is a person whose immune system was not able to clear the infection from the body, so the virus persists and the carrier remains infectious to others throughout his or her lifetime. People with impaired immune systems, such as those with HIV infection, are more likely than others to be carriers. Those who develop symptoms of hepatitis B infection are also more likely to become carriers than those who do not.

There are two kinds of carriers, with different prognoses. About one-third of carriers develop chronic active hepatitis, in which the virus continues to cause destruction of the liver. This chronic destruction can lead to scarring of the liver, known as cirrhosis. These people are the most infectious to others through the types of contact listed in the next section, on transmission. They are also at risk of developing liver cancer [hepatocellular carcinoma). The risk of developing liver cancer is about one hundred times higher in those people who have been infected with hepatitis B than in the noninfected population, and about 1-2 percent per year for someone with chronic active hepatitis B infection.

Both cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma can be fatal. Hepatocellular carcinoma usually takes years to develop after someone acquires a chronic infection, although occasionally the tumor can be seen after a shorter time, and it is sometimes seen in childhood among children who had been infected at birth. It is more common in populations in which the rate of chronic infection and transmission to newborns is higher, such as in Asian countries. There is as yet no cure for hepatocellular carcinoma, although surgery and chemotherapy may have some success, depending on the person and the stage of the cancer.