follow-up of chronic hepatitis b carriers: a cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study

Background: hepatitis b is a serious liver infection and one of the 5 leading causes of death around the world. chronic hepatitis b has a variant natural history. around one-third of patients with chronic hepatitismayeventually develop cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma. the aim of this study was to follow-up chronic hepatitis b carriers. methods: this cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study was doneon235 chronic hepatitis bcarriers,whoreferred to an infectious disease and tropical medicine clinic, in birjand, iran. all chronic hepatitis b carriers, who had referred to the study settings from 2005 to 2013, were approached. data were entered in the spss software (v. 21.0) and analyzed via the chi-square and the fisher’s exact tests at a significance level of less than 0.5. results: the majority of participants were male (132 cases, 56.2%) and married (193 cases, 82.1%) and were aged 33.30.7. the followup mean time was 5 years with a range of 3 to 9 years. during this follow-up period, 10 individuals (4%) experienced seroconversion from hepatitis b surface antigen (hbsag) positivity to negativity, 35 (15%) developed active hepatitis, 8 (3.5%) developed cirrhosis, and 2 (1%) developed liver cancer. the remaining 180 participants (76.5%) had inactive hepatitis. among participants, 45 (19%) were hepatitis b e antigen-positive, 24.5% of whom experienced positivity to negativity seroconversion. conclusions: most chronic hepatitis b carriers are primarily asymptomatic. however, 15% developed serious liver disease over time. therefore, careful lifelong follow-up assessments are needed for early diagnosis and prevention.