Eradication Strategies for Chronic Hepatitis B Infection.

Chronic hepatitis B infection affects >300 million people worldwide and is a leading cause of liver failure and cancer. Current approaches to treatment for chronic hepatitis B involve suppression of hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA with the use of nucleoside analogues. Chronic suppressive therapy rarely results in a "functional cure" or absence of detectable HBV DNA in plasma and loss of detectable hepatitis B surface antigen after cessation of therapy. The major obstacles to achieving a functional cure are the presence of covalently closed circular DNA and ineffective/exhaustive immune system. This review focuses on novel approaches to target viral life cycle and host immunity to achieve a functional cure. Published by Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society of America 2016. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.