What is Hepatitis B?

How is hepatitis B transmitted?

Hepatitis B is transmitted through blood, through sexual contact (if there is blood in semen, saliva and vaginal secretions or bleeding in the rectum) and from mother to child during birth. Viruses can also be transmitted by blood transfusion, through needle sticks, surgery and tattooing.

Condoms protect well against sexual infection with hepatitis B.

What are the symptoms of hepatitis B?

It typically takes several months from the time one has been infected to the onset of symptoms. The symptoms can be fever, nausea, pain in the stomach and jaundice (skin and whites of the eyes turn yellow). The urine becomes dark and the stool whitish. Most people infected with hepatitis B experience only mild or no symptoms.

How is hepatitis B tested and treated?

Hepatitis B is detected by combining medical history and signs of illness with a blood test. The blood test shows whether there are antibodies in the blood. Because acute hepatitis B is a rare disease in Denmark, most people found infected through a blood test will have a chronic hepatitis B infection.

Treatment for hepatitis B cannot cure the infected person completely, but inhibits the formation of the virus in the body and the inflammation and thus can bring the infected person into the inactive stage of the disease, so that the risk of serious consequences is reduced. Treatment of acute hepatitis B is only about relieving the symptoms of the infection and not about the infection itself.

Hepatitis B can be prevented by vaccination. It may possibly combined with hepatitis A vaccination.

What are the consequences of hepatitis B?

People with chronic hepatitis B infection have an increased risk of developing cirrhosis over a number of years.

They also have an increased risk of getting liver cancer.

If you are pregnant and have a chronic hepatitis B infection, there is a risk of infecting the child at birth.

All children born to mothers with chronic hepatitis B infection must be vaccinated at birth and treated with a drug to avoid becoming infected.

The Danish Health Authority has introduced routine examinations of all pregnant women for hepatitis B.

This prevents some newborns from developing a chronic Hepatitis B infection.