3. How many people have chronic hepatitis B?

The large amount of carriers, most of whom are in Asia, the large number of deaths per year. There are 1.25 million carriers in the US, or 0.3% of the adult population as I alluded to. Now compare this to hepatitis C, hepatitis C is 4 million adults in America and about 2% of adult Americans, so hepatitis C gets a lot more of the press but we’re working on that to try to get more of the press interested in realizing that hepatitis B also is a major infection in the United States. The real concern is the premature mortality from cirrhosis or HCC (the abbreviation for hepatocellular carcinoma) liver cancer, that also goes by the name "hepatoma", and that ranges from 15% to 40%, or roughly a quarter of the people with chronic hepatitis B. This is in particular people who are infected early in life. We’re a little less knowledgeable about people who are Caucasian Americans infected in their adolescence or early adult life about whether these same kind of statistics really apply.