Five-year results of chronic hepatitis B infection treatment in children with cured cancer

摘要

To the editor:Children with cancer are at high risk for hepatitis B (HBV) and C virus infections due to immunosupression secondary to chemotherapy and multiple transfusions of blood products. In a study from Turkey, 11.6% of children surviving malignancy had positive hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) (1). Interferon (IFN) alone (6 or 12 months) or prednisone with IFN-alpha and famciclo-vir were used for treatment of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection and response to treatment was observed in approximately 25% of these children (2-4). Kocak et al. (2) reported that complete response, defined as clearance of both HBV DNA and hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) and serocon-version to anti-HBe was observed in two (25%) out of eight patients. Kasirga et al. (3) reported that three (27.3%) out of 11 patients had sero-conversion to anti-HBe. Long-term results of treatment were not reported in these studies. Our aim was to evaluate the 5-year results of CHB treatment in children with cured cancer.