This week, we’re dipping a toe back into the vast waters of hepatitis viruses, this time with a focus on hepatitis B. The hepatitis B virus, though second to be named, was first to be discovered, and effective vaccines and treatments have been available for decades. Yet the global prevalence of this virus remains staggering, with nearly 300 million people chronically infected and 1.5 million new infections annually. So what’s going on? In this episode, we weave our way through the complicated biology of this virus and its deadly potential, the strange history of its identification that shows that you don’t have to be looking for something to find it, and the current status of this virus that underlines how safe, effective tools for disease prevention are only as good as our delivery infrastructure. We are also so excited to be joined by Dr. Su Wang, Medical Director for the Center for Asian Health & Viral Hepatitis Programs at the Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center and outgoing President of the World Hepatitis Alliance.
| History | Biology |
| Blumberg, Baruch S. Hepatitis B: The hunt for a killer virus. Princeton University Press, 2002. | Seto, W.K., Lo, Y.R., Pawlotsky, J.M. and Yuen, M.F., 2018. Chronic hepatitis B virus infection. The Lancet, 392(10161), pp.2313-2324. |
| Alter, H. J., and B. S. Blumberg. “Further studies on a” new” human isoprecipitin system (Australia antigen).” Blood 27.3 (1966): 297-309. | Lai, C.L., Ratziu, V., Yuen, M.F. and Poynard, T., 2003. Viral hepatitis B. The Lancet, 362(9401), pp.2089-2094. |
| Andernach, Iris E., et al. “Slave trade and hepatitis B virus genotypes and subgenotypes in Haiti and Africa.” Emerging infectious diseases 15.8 (2009): 1222. | Liaw, Y.F. and Chu, C.M., 2009. Hepatitis B virus infection. The lancet, 373(9663), pp.582-592. |
| Dane, D. S., C. H. Cameron, and Moya Briggs. “Virus-like particles in serum of patients with Australia-antigen-associated hepatitis.” The Lancet 295.7649 (1970): 695-698. | Rasche, A., Sander, A.L., Corman, V.M. and Drexler, J.F., 2019. Evolutionary biology of human hepatitis viruses. Journal of hepatology, 70(3), pp.501-520. |
| Fares, Mario Ali, and Edward C. Holmes. “A revised evolutionary history of hepatitis B virus (HBV).” Journal of molecular evolution 54.6 (2002): 807-814. | Terrault, N.A., Lok, A.S., McMahon, B.J., Chang, K.M., Hwang, J.P., Jonas, M.M., Brown Jr, R.S., Bzowej, N.H. and Wong, J.B., 2018. Update on prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of chronic hepatitis B: AASLD 2018 hepatitis B guidance. Hepatology, 67(4), pp.1560-1599. |
| Galibert, Francis, et al. “Nucleotide sequence of the hepatitis B virus genome (subtype ayw) cloned in E. coli.” Nature 281.5733 (1979): 646-650. | Dionne-Odom, J., Cozzi, G.D., Franco, R.A., Njei, B. and Tita, A.T., 2021. Treatment and prevention of viral hepatitis in pregnancy. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. |
| Gerlich, Wolfram H. “Medical virology of hepatitis B: how it began and where we are now.” Virology journal 10.1 (2013): 1-25. | Razavi-Shearer, D., Gamkrelidze, I., Nguyen, M.H., Chen, D.S., Van Damme, P., Abbas, Z., Abdulla, M., Abou Rached, A., Adda, D., Aho, I. and Akarca, U., 2018. Global prevalence, treatment, and prevention of hepatitis B virus infection in 2016: a modelling study. The lancet Gastroenterology & hepatology, 3(6), pp.383-403. |
| Kocher, Arthur, et al. “Ten millennia of hepatitis B virus evolution.” Science 374.6564 (2021): 182-188. | Mak, L.Y., Seto, W.K., Fung, J. and Yuen, M.F., 2019. Novel developments of hepatitis B: treatment goals, agents and monitoring tools. Expert review of clinical pharmacology, 12(2), pp.109-120. |
| Kostaki, Evangelia-Georgia, et al. “Unravelling the history of hepatitis B virus genotypes A and D infection using a full-genome phylogenetic and phylogeographic approach.” Elife 7 (2018): e36709. | WHO. Factsheet Hepatitis B. 27 July 2021. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/hepatitis-b |
| Krugman, Saul. “The Willowbrook hepatitis studies revisited: ethical aspects.” Reviews of infectious diseases 8.1 (1986): 157-162. | |
| Krugman, Saul, Joan P. Giles, and Jack Hammond. “Infectious hepatitis: evidence for two distinctive clinical, epidemiological, and immunological types of infection.” Jama 200.5 (1967): 365-373. | |
| Le Gautier, Roslyn, et al. “The personal and social impact of chronic hepatitis B: A qualitative study of Vietnamese and Chinese participants in Australia.” Health & Social Care in the Community 29.5 (2021): 1420-1428. | |
| Locarnini, Stephen A., Margaret Littlejohn, and Lilly KW Yuen. “Origins and Evolution of the Primate Hepatitis B Virus.” Frontiers in Microbiology 12 (2021): 1195. | |
| Maccallum, F. O., and D. J. Bauer. “Homologous serum jaundice: transmission experiments with human volunteers.” Lancet (1944): 622-7. | |
| MacCallum, F. O. “1971 International Symposium on Viral Hepatitis. Historical perspectives.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 106.Spec Issue (1972): 423. | |
| Mude, William W., et al. “Social impacts of living with chronic hepatitis B in South Sudanese community in Australia.” Ethnicity & health (2020): 1-13. | |
| Mühlemann, Barbara, et al. “Ancient hepatitis B viruses from the Bronze Age to the Medieval period.” Nature 557.7705 (2018): 418-423. | |
| Paraskevis, Dimitrios, et al. “Dating the origin and dispersal of hepatitis B virus infection in humans and primates.” Hepatology 57.3 (2013): 908-916. | |
| Poduri, C. D. “Jaundice: A brief historical perspective.” Apollo Medicine 13.2 (2016): 76-79. | |
| Robinson, Walter M., and Brandon T. Unruh. “The hepatitis experiments at the Willowbrook state school.” The Oxford textbook of clinical research ethics (2008): 80-85. | |
| Ross, Zoe Patterson, et al. “The paradox of HBV evolution as revealed from a 16th century mummy.” PLoS pathogens 14.1 (2018): e1006750. | |
| Seeff, Leonard B., et al. “A serologic follow-up of the 1942 epidemic of post-vaccination hepatitis in the United States Army.” New England Journal of Medicine 316.16 (1987): 965-970. | |
| Suh, Alexander, et al. “The genome of a Mesozoic paleovirus reveals the evolution of hepatitis B viruses.” Nature communications 4.1 (2013): 1-7. | |
| Torres, Carolina, et al. “New perspectives on the evolutionary history of hepatitis B virus genotype F.” Molecular phylogenetics and evolution 59.1 (2011): 114-122. | |
| Wallace, J., et al. “More than a virus: a qualitative study of the social implications of hepatitis B infection in China.” International journal for equity in health 16.1 (2017): 1-7. |
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