The American Association for the Study of Liver Disease (AASLD), the organization that defines how doctors should treat hepatitis B and other liver ailments, unveiled new hepatitis B treatment guidelines this week at its annual conference in San Francisco.
With Veterans Day comes reports about the lack of adequate mental health care for men and women returning from war. There is another, invisible health issue threatening veterans of all ages–hepatitis B.
Few veterans have ever been screened or treated for hepatitis B though their infection rate is four-times the national average.
The percentage of veterans infected with hepatitis B may actually be higher, but no one knows. Only 15 percent of U.S. veterans have ever been screened for hepatitis B. Among the few screened and diagnosed with chronic hepatitis B, only 25 percent have received antiviral treatment and only 13 percent have been screened for liver cancer. Continue reading "The Veterans Administration Ignores an Enemy on the Homefront: Hepatitis B"→
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With the cost of health care and prescription drugs soaring, it’s important to choose health insurance carefully when you take hepatitis B medications and need frequent check-ups and lab tests.
In the next two months, Medicare recipients, people who get insurance through their jobs and consumers buying coverage through the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) will be selecting insurance plans during open enrollment.
If you take antivirals or interferon and have frequent lab tests and doctor visits, it’s important that you select the plan that:
Has your specialist or primary care doctor and lab in its network,
And offers the lowest copay for the drugs you need.
We who live with hepatitis B know that avoiding alcohol and cigarettes go a long way toward reducing our risk of liver cancer. But there are new threats emerging. Researchers are finding that obesity, diabetes and developing fatty liver from unhealthy food and a sedentary lifestyle can be just as dangerous to our livers.
If you have chronic hepatitis and are obese with a fatty liver, your liver cancer risk increases 1.5 to 4.5 times
And, if you have hepatitis B and diabetes, your liver cancer risk climbs two- to three-fold.
This is a sobering realization that our lifestyle and our weight matter a lot when it comes to how long we will live. We may like to think we won’t develop liver cancer because our viral load is low or our liver tests don’t show any damage, but sitting all day and over-eating are just as dangerous. Continue reading "Want to Avoid Liver Cancer? There Are Things You Can Control"→
The longer we have hepatitis B, the higher our risk of developing liver cancer. With every decade of life, our liver cancer risk increases 2.7-times, according to a report on Viral Hepatitis in the Elderly published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology.
But current medical guidelines don’t spell out exactly when liver cancer testing should begin in many hepatitis B patients who don’t have liver damage (cirrhosis) or a family history of liver cancer, and are not of Asian or African descent.
Age is clearly an important factor when it comes to liver cancer, “… but current guidelines only provide age-specific recommendations for (liver cancer) surveillance in hepatitis B carriers of Asian ethnicity (men over age 40 and women over age 50),” a team of University of Miami and Veterans Affairs researchers wrote in the journal article. Continue reading "Your Doctor Not Screening You for Liver Cancer? Time for a Talk"→
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October is Liver Cancer Awareness Month. It may be a sleeper of a event when compared to other health campaigns, but for us who live with viral hepatitis, it’s an uncomfortable but critical reminder of the importance of monitoring our liver health to prevent cancer.
Viral hepatitis, especially B and C, are viral infections that can cause liver cancer (also called hepatocellular carcinoma or HCC.) Researchers are still studying why some people are more prone to liver cancer, but we who live with chronic hepatitis B or C have a 25 to 40 percent lifetime risk of developing liver cancer. The infection, which hijacks our liver cells to manufacture more virus, causes inflammation, scarring and even cancer as the liver cells grow out of control.
Most people living with chronic hepatitis B today are over age 50, and like their younger counterparts, they need to prevent spreading hepatitis B to their sexual partners, housemates, and neighbors in assisted living facilities.
You’re never too old for safe sex: You may not have to worry about pregnancy any more, but you still need to protect yourself and your partner against sexually transmitted diseases such as hepatitis B. Using a condom (and keeping a barrier between you and potentially infectious body fluids) is essential because many seniors have not been immunized against hepatitis B.
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When people with chronic hepatitis B experience abdominal pain, we often wonder if it’s related to our liver and if our hepatitis B is getting worse.
According to experts, hepatitis B rarely causes abdominal pain. Here are some insights to help you understand what might be behind your abdominal pain when you live with chronic hepatitis B.
First, it’s not called the silent infection for nothing. When first infected, most children and nearly 70 percent of adults never experience any direct symptoms from hepatitis B. When people do have symptoms, such as aches, nausea and fever, they usually last for only a few days. Only a very small percentage have symptoms that persist long-term. Continue reading "When Is That Pain Hep B-related and When Is It Something Else?"→
The North and South Americas group builds relationships to eradicate viral hepatitis.
The mood was euphoric. It was a love fest, actually. Last week, more than 600 policy makers, public health experts, and representatives from non-governmental organizations and patient advocacy groups from 80 countries were invited to participate in the first World Hepatitis Summit in Scotland hosted by the World Hepatitis Alliance in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO). The Hepatitis B Foundation was pleased to be invited and to speak during the pre-summit meeting as well.
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Around the world, older adults bear the greatest burden of hepatitis B. Born before the childhood vaccination became available, about 4.7 percent of U.S. adults over age 50 have been infected and their chronic hepatitis B rate is nearly two-fold higher than in younger adults.
The 50-plus generation has lived with with chronic hepatitis B for decades, and over time their risk of liver damage, cirrhosis, and cancer has steadily increased. That is why it is very important that older adults living with this infection see their physicians regularly and have tests for liver damage and cancer performed as needed. Continue reading "Growing Older with Hepatitis B: Why Testing for Liver Damage Still Matters"→
