Hepatitis B
These are some basic things about hepatitis B. The states of hepatitis B and relevant therapy for any patients are different, so the data and information in this article are not suitable for everyone and only for reference.
Definition:
Hepatitis B is one type of hepatitis – caused by the hepatitis B virus (HBV). Hepatitis B is an infectious disease with chronic carrier status and spreads by contact with an infected person's blood, semen or other body fluid. An infected woman can give hepatitis B to her baby at birth. It has various clinical manifestations includes, acute, chronic, cholestatic and severe hepatitis B. Having hepatitis B increases your chance of permanent liver damage, including chronic hepatitis B, cirrhosis (scarring of the liver) and liver cancer. The infectious rate can reach to 60% and positive rate of HBsAg is about 10% to 15%. Hepatitis B is the most serious infectious disease and affects people’s health and life severely.
Infection routes:
Hepatitis B is transmitted via blood and other body fluids. Infection source are patients with acute or chronic hepatitis B and carriers with HBsAg. Infection can occur through:
1. Contact with blood in healthcare settings -- this puts physicians, nurses, dentists, and other healthcare personnel at risk.
2. Birth -- an infected mother can transmit the virus to the baby during delivery or shortly thereafter.
3. Sharing needles or using infected medical instrument during drug use and blood transfusions.
4. Unsafe sex with an infected person or with several partners. Homosexual sex contact and sex with no safety measure.
5. Hepatitis B patients or carriers’ blood, semen, vagina secretionor, breast milk, and other body fluid may have HBV.
Categories
In accordance of different clinical features, hepatitis B can be divided into following types:
1. Carriers with HBV. If there is only surface antigen positive in healthy liver and no symptoms, whether it’s large-three-positive or small-three-positive, we can call the person with these situations HBV carriers. This group occupied mostly in HBV infections. It is worthy to notice that if the chronic hepatitis disease is not treated, it will develop into hepatocirrhosis. So an accurate diagnosis may be made by a long-term and dynamic observation.
2. Acute hepatitis B. Disease course within six months is called acute hepatitis B. It occurs quickly and symptom degrees are various. Most surface antigen will disappear within half a year and some will develop into chronic hepatitis B.
3. Chronic hepatitis B. Disease course over six months is called chronic hepatitis B. It occurs frequently and lasts for a long time. If you get HBV for the first time, you may feel as if you have the flu, or you may have no symptoms at all.
4. Severe hepatitis B. It has acute symptom and happens promptly, coming fiercely and seriously. If it cannot be cured immediately, it will endanger the life.
Symptoms:
Symptoms are summarized as follows：
1. Systemic symptoms. When liver function is disturbed, intakes of nutrients is deficient and absorption is obstructed, these will lead patients with hepatitis B feel persistent fatigue, malaise, and laziness. Inflammation may lead to malabsorption and nutrients can not get a sufficient metabolizing. Hepatitis B may lead to mental pressure and psychological stress, and then these can influence the quality of rest and sleeping. Insomnia and dreaminess are also caused by these.
2. Digestive symptom. Liver is an important digestive organ and excretes bile for digestion. Hepatitis may decrease bile secretion and impact digestion and absorption.Hepatic inflammation can also result in bleeding obstacle of liver sinusoid and induce congestion and edema in gastrointestinal tract, and these may influence digestion and absorption. Therefore, symptoms may include nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, abdominal distension and upper abdominal aches.
3. Jaundice appears on eyes and skin three to ten days later. This is caused by the gradually increased bilirubin concentrations in blood. The difficult expelling of bile acid may lead a high bile acid concentration in blood and the excessive bile acid will be stained on skin and stimulates nerve ending, these will lead the itch of skin.
4. Ache on liver. There is no pain nerve in liver, so patients with hepatitis B have no pain feeling. Hepatic integument, a thin film with a lot of pain nerves on liver surface. Liver tumefaction can stimulate pain nerves on hepatic integument. As a result, patients may have light pain in the right upper abdomen and right hypochondrium. It is also worth noticing the biliary tract diseases, liver cancer and gastrointestinal diseases while an acute ache appears.
5. Hepatosplenomegaly. Inflammation, congestion, edema and cholestasis often cause liver enlargement. No obvious hepatosplenomegaly in early acute hepatitis or chronic hepatitis. Durative and progressive hepatosplenomegaly is a sign of liver cirrhosis.
6、Signs out of liver. Other signs of liver disease sometimes present such as spider nevi, splenomegaly and retention of fluid. Male symptoms conclude erective dysfunction, unsymmetry or symmetry galactophore hyperplasia and gall and sometimes it may be misdiagnosed as galactophore cancer. While menstrual disorder, amenorrhea and hypaphrodisia may happen to women. And these relates to the declined liver function
Most damage from hepatitis B virus is caused by the body's response to the infection. And the disease is also influenced by psychic and psychological factors.
Diagnosis:
A blood test can tell if you have HBV. HBs positive in blood is a sign for HBV infection. Furthermore, we need to check whether ALT value is abnormal or not. And we need to use B- ultrasound to detect HBV and HBe antigen antibody exist in blood or not.
People who need to get physical examination
1. Over 40 years old;
2. Blood transfusions and surgery;
3. Relatives with hepatitis B, hepatocirrhosis or liver cancer;
4. Sex with unfamiliar person
5. Long-term hemodialysis
6. Pregnant woman
7. Receiving a tattoo or acupuncture outside the hospital;
8. Using contaminated instruments
Treatment:
Antivirus therapy (interferon therapy, entecavir therapy, lamivudine therapy and the therapy together lamivudine with entecavir), liver function improvement therapy and immunotherapy are the general treatment methods.
Acute hepatitis B can be treated with liver function improvement therapy and most patients can obtain recovery. Still, the sudden death which was induced by acute hepatitis B should be aroused our attentions.
HBV can not be eliminated entirely. so , to decrease virus propagation in the largest scale can be the major objective. It is important to take a suitable method according to doctor’s diagnosis.
Cautions for preventing infection:
1. Blood donation is forbidden;
2. Put away anything that stained by the infected blood;
3. Using private commodities like, toothbrush and razor;
4. Let the doctor know your situations of hepatitis B before curing for the other diseases.
5. Throw away the things contaminated by the bleeding from traumatism, dermatosis, nosebleed and menstrual flow. Sexual contact with a person who has acute or chronic hepatitis B should be avoided. Condoms, if used consistently and properly, may also reduce transmission through sexual contact. But this is not absolute safe.
Points for attention:
Paying attention to avoid mental stress and excessive fatigue is necessary for patients with hepatitis B. The other important point is to give up drinking alcohol, because even a little intaking will worsen the disease. And eating a healthy and well balanced diet.
Do not washing in hot water (especially washing after meal) and taking sauna for a long time in order to avoid excessive consumption of physical strengthen. Patients should have reasonable work and rest time and take periodic physical checking in order to know the development of disease and take the suitable methods for curing.
Hepatitis B VS YHK:
In all data that represent liver function status, the most important one is GPT（ALT）, which is a kind of ferment in liver cells. In the case of hepatitis, liver cells are constantly destroyed. Then the ferment comes into blood. We can know the degree of patients’ liver function directly, according to the value change of the ferment.
YHK can reduce the value of GPT（ALT）speedily, normally about 10 days. The great reduction of value of GPT will effectively control the damage of hepatitis virus to liver cell. If the hepatitis patients can keep liver function normal for long time, the disease can hardly develop into liver cirrhosis and liver cancer.
In addition, YHK can also reduce the value of GOT（AST）, another data that also represents the liver function status. It is an important proof to know the liver disease. But the GOT（AST）exists not only in liver, but also in heart and muscles. Compared to it, we pay more attention on GPT（ALT）. Speed of YHK reducing value of GOT（AST）is a little slower than GPT（ALT）. For most of patients, value of GOT（AST）can be reduced to about 60 in 20 days after taking YHK.
The number of platelets in the blood will increase after patients taking YHK. The decrease of platelets appears with fibrosis of liver cells.
