Hepatitis – Treatments

If Hepatitis is due to an infectious cause, the treatment varies according to the infecting viral agent.

Hepatitis A 

Usually there is no specific treatment carried out for hepatitis A. Corticosteroids, rest and dietary measures have no proven effectiveness in relieving the disease. The disease persist for several weeks and wears off on its own. 

Even though hospital admission is not requires, because the patient can recover on its own, many physicians tends to keep the patient under observation even after recovery. This is because that some people often develop another attack of hepatitis in rare instances.

If the patient develops fulminant hepatitis, it can be so severe enough to cause death.

Hepatitis B

The disease could be acute or chronic.

Acute Hepatitis – 

The treatments are often symptomatic, but antiviral therapy is started for symptomatic patients, but the efficacy of the treatment is still unknown.

Some specialist thinks that HBeAg positive patients should be treated with neucleoside analogues for 12 months. 

Chronic Heptitis –

These patients are treated with following antivirals.

• ·         Interferon

• ·         Lamivudin – Monotherapy is not recommended.

• ·         Adefovir – More effective than LAmivudin.

                                 Reduces HBV DNA more quickly
                                 Less virus resistance

• ·         Entacavir

• ·         Tenofovir  - Effective against lamivudin resisitant viruses.

In general C Hepatitis is treated with pegylated interferon or tenofovir

Hepatitis D

The patients are treated with pegylated alpha-29 interferon for 12 months duration, but the response id very poor. Lamivudin and adefovir are also not effective.

Hepatitis C

They are usually given a combination of pegylated interferon and ribavirin. The efficiency of the treatment will depend on the viral load.

References:

Kumar and Clark’s Clinical Medicine 7^th Edition