چكيده لاتين :
The primary goal of therapy in patients with chronic hepatitis B is suppression and long-lasting
maintenance of hepatitis B virus DNA to its lowest possible level. The threshold of hepatitis B
virus DNA level for therapy is ~1 05 copies/mL for HBeAg-positive patients and ~1 04 for those with
HBeAg-negative chronic hepatitis B. Interferon alpha-2b, lamivudine, and adefovir-dipivoxil are
approved by FDA and could all be used as an initial first-line therapy in chronic hepatitis B.
Adding lamivudine to either conventional interferon or peg-interferon did not increase the efficacy.
Adding lamivudine to adefovir had also no additional effect in compensated patients. Response
rate is about 30% - 40% with first-line drugs. Peg-interferon, which recently received the FDA
approval, is associated with an increased response rate. Further long-term studies are required to
use peg-interferon as a widespread first-line treatment. Treatment strategy is changing towards
using prolonged combination therapy with evolving nucleoside analogues with or without an
immunomodulatory agent, aiming at eradicating covalently closed circular DNA.
