I was asked to write something about Hepatitis B (again). And as I ponder on how I could present it differently, this ancient disease remained stone faced. Literatures, no matter how pregnant researches had been, the story never changes. It remained a dark disease from old to modern. It is a disease masked in to grotesqueness and misunderstanding. An anamorphosis of what social culture had deemed acceptable. A product of conflict avoidance and false assurances. It should be written in tombstones.
I will no longer go into it’s medical jargons. Even doctors find it quite confusing to understand. I leave the reading to you all. Google has so much written about it, both true and false. Learn to discriminate. The literatures however, no matter how technical they are presented, gives nothing new. Hepatitis B is uncomprehensible.
One thing remained clear however. Hepatitis B infection is a disease so unlike Hepatitis A and E. You do not get it by eating fecal contaminated food. Route of transmission is solely by blood, and body fluids. It can not be transmitted via saliva. The HBV ,like HIV is instantly killed by the enzymes in the saliva. There should be adequate amount of body contaminations. Tattoos may qualify if you had yours done by an artist who re use needles (which probably does not happen nowadays that disposable tattoo needles can be purchased cheap). Transplacental transmision from a hepatitis B infected mother to child may also be considered cause of infection. Though, if a baby is born in a hospital, prenatal work ups often include HbsAg screening. A hepatitis B infected newborn often do not thrive beyond 6 months if not given Hepatitis B Immunoglobulins within 48 hours after birth. Why then is Hepatitis B infection still considered an epidemic? Because it is also and predominantly sexually transmitted. You do not get it from having your nails cleaned, unless you get punctured 3 times daily by an infected nail cleaner, the exposure is not substancial. But some doctors, out of nothing to say, or at a loss for better reasons on how to walk around a diagnosis of HB, they resort to this reasoning, which honestly is absurb even to a newbie MD. But what can I say. Conflict avoidance is the name of the game.
Hepatitis B may resolve spontaneously in acute cases, but once it reaches more than 6 months of reactive serum antigen, it is there to stay. The infection is then called Chronic Hepatitis B Disease (CHBD). It is often silent, but it remains contageous even in its most docile form. Eventually, it will cause severe complications, Hepatic damage, and multiple organ failure.
The aim of therapy is obviously not seroconvertion. The goal of treatment is prevention of complication, control of infection, and containing viral load to the minimum. Telling the patient that he or she is not infectious is equated in magnitude of misinformation to saying that there is no more hope. CHBD is a highly infectious, progressive, and if left untreated, often a fatal disease. But it is not a dead end diagnosis. There is hope for CHBD.
By Dr Joei Pacio-Mayor
Copyright for Caduceus Medica
Sept 15, 2015
#HepatitisBInfection #CHBD #StdClinicManila #STD #CaduceusMedica
I will no longer go into it’s medical jargons. Even doctors find it quite confusing to understand. I leave the reading to you all. Google has so much written about it, both true and false. Learn to discriminate. The literatures however, no matter how technical they are presented, gives nothing new. Hepatitis B is uncomprehensible.
One thing remained clear however. Hepatitis B infection is a disease so unlike Hepatitis A and E. You do not get it by eating fecal contaminated food. Route of transmission is solely by blood, and body fluids. It can not be transmitted via saliva. The HBV ,like HIV is instantly killed by the enzymes in the saliva. There should be adequate amount of body contaminations. Tattoos may qualify if you had yours done by an artist who re use needles (which probably does not happen nowadays that disposable tattoo needles can be purchased cheap). Transplacental transmision from a hepatitis B infected mother to child may also be considered cause of infection. Though, if a baby is born in a hospital, prenatal work ups often include HbsAg screening. A hepatitis B infected newborn often do not thrive beyond 6 months if not given Hepatitis B Immunoglobulins within 48 hours after birth. Why then is Hepatitis B infection still considered an epidemic? Because it is also and predominantly sexually transmitted. You do not get it from having your nails cleaned, unless you get punctured 3 times daily by an infected nail cleaner, the exposure is not substancial. But some doctors, out of nothing to say, or at a loss for better reasons on how to walk around a diagnosis of HB, they resort to this reasoning, which honestly is absurb even to a newbie MD. But what can I say. Conflict avoidance is the name of the game.
Hepatitis B may resolve spontaneously in acute cases, but once it reaches more than 6 months of reactive serum antigen, it is there to stay. The infection is then called Chronic Hepatitis B Disease (CHBD). It is often silent, but it remains contageous even in its most docile form. Eventually, it will cause severe complications, Hepatic damage, and multiple organ failure.
The aim of therapy is obviously not seroconvertion. The goal of treatment is prevention of complication, control of infection, and containing viral load to the minimum. Telling the patient that he or she is not infectious is equated in magnitude of misinformation to saying that there is no more hope. CHBD is a highly infectious, progressive, and if left untreated, often a fatal disease. But it is not a dead end diagnosis. There is hope for CHBD.
By Dr Joei Pacio-Mayor
Copyright for Caduceus Medica
Sept 15, 2015
#HepatitisBInfection #CHBD #StdClinicManila #STD #CaduceusMedica