Some patients who were infected by Hepatitis B virus do not recover completely. Five to 10% of adults and about 90% of babies who get hepatitis B will go on to "carry" or keep the virus for the rest of their lives. These people are called "hepatitis B carriers." Hepatitis B virus carriers feel healthy, do not feel sick or look sick, have no ongoing hepatitis or liver damage. However, their blood tests show they still have the virus and have not developed Hepatitis B antibodies. Therefore, they can pass on the virus to other people or replication of the Hepatitis virus in their blood can active again and cause their own liver damages. About a quarter of the carriers would develop chronic hepatitis, and at increased risk of having serious liver disease including cirrhosis and liver cancer.
Although rare, Hepatitis B can also cause complications outside the liver (non liver condition), such as kidney damages, and skin lesions. It may or may not involve liver. If no liver involvement, the client's liver function may appear relatively normal, but medical evidence may show that Hepatitis B virus was the main cause of the condition.
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HBV disproportionately affects the Asian/ Pacific Islander population in the US - one out of ten API Americans has hepatitis B and doesn't know it. The most common cause of this disease is transmission at birth from an infected mother who unknowingly passed the virus on to her newborn. Check out Los Angeles Hepatitis Intervention Project (LA HIP) on Facebook at
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Marianne Ruane
LA HIP
www.asianpacificlivercenter.org
la.hip@gmail.com
Similar to the disproportion of HBV infection among Asia Pacific Islander population in the US, most people in the Asia region become infected with HBV during childhood. 8% to 10% of the adult population are chronically infected. Whereas, less than 1% of the population in western Europe and North American is chronically infected.
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