A new study has shown that evidence of past hepatitis B infection was twice as common in people with pancreatic cancer than in healthy controls. This study is the first to report an association between past exposure to the hepatitis B virus and pancreatic cancer, but researchers cautioned that more studies are necessary to evaluate the nature of the link.

New BARACLUDE (entecavir) data presented today demonstrated a continued low incidence of resistance in nucleoside-naпve patients through five years of treatment. In the nucleoside-naпve chronic hepatitis B patients analyzed, no additional patient developed resistance in the fifth year (n=108).

Lamivudine is an effective antiviral agent for treatment of patients with chronic hepatitis B and advanced liver diseases.

The failure of the UK to introduce universal hepatitis B immunisation means that most UK citizens are susceptible to infection, warns an infectious diseases expert in this week’s BMJ.

In the face of an emerging liver cancer crisis in Asia, researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong have developed a test that could help millions. Due to widespread hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, nearly 10 percent of China’s population is at high risk for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a liver cancer with low survival rates if not detected and treated early.

Injection drug users are still at a very high risk of acquiring hepatitis C (HCV) and hepatitis B (HBV); however, needle-sharing is less common, and users do not become infected as quickly as they did in the past, according to a new study in the September issue of Hepatology, a journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).

In a report that is among the first to describe the prevalence of HIV and Hepatitis B and C viruses in Afghanistan, a researcher from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine voiced concerns that increasing injection drug use and accompanying high-risk behavior could lead to an HIV epidemic in Afghanistan.

Mummies that have recently been unearthed in South Korea may provide clues on how to combat hepatitis B, according to Prof. Mark Spigelman of the Kuvin Center for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Treating hepatitis B patients with the drug entecavir can cause those who are also infected with HIV to become resistant to two of the most important drugs in the anti-HIV arsenal, according to a new report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Many patients with chronic hepatitis B are deficient in their understanding of the lifelong disease and often do not comply with the drug regimens necessary to control it, according to a new UCLA survey that suggests improved patient involvement in disease management decisions could be the key to fixing this problem.