Current treatments for chronic hepatitis B virus infections

Fabien Zoulim (1) , Fanny Lebossé (1) , Massimo Levrero (2, 1, 3)

1 UNICANCER/CRCL - Centre de Recherche en Cancérologie de Lyon
2 CLNS@SAPIENZA Roma - Center for Life Nanoscience/IIT@Sapienza [Rome, Italy]
3 DMISM - Department of Internal Medicine [Rome, Italy]

Over 240 million people worldwide are chronically infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV) and although a prophylactic vaccine and effective antiviral therapies are available, no cure exists. Curative regimens are urgently needed because up to one million deaths per year are caused by HBV-related liver cancer and end-stage liver disease. HBV is an hepatotropic virus which belongs to the Hepadnaviridae family and replicates its DNA genome via a reverse transcriptase mechanism. Effective therapies have been developed for chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection in the last two decades. They rely on the use of interferon alpha and its pegylated formulation, and on nucleos(t)ide analogs that inhibit viral polymerase activity. Their results are discussed in this review as well as future perspectives

Keywords: therapy; Italy; Dna; End Stage Liver Disease; Family; France; Genome; Hepatitis; Hepatitis B; Interferon-alpha; Infection; Hepatitis B virus; Liver

Domains: Cancer

Fabien Zoulim, Fanny Lebossé, Massimo Levrero. Current treatments for chronic hepatitis B virus infections. Current Opinion in Virology, 2016, 18, pp.109-116. ⟨10.1016/j.coviro.2016.06.004⟩. ⟨hal-01796195⟩