Hepatitis B is a severe infectious disease and it is mainly caused due to Hepatitis B virus. This virus mainly infects the liver and leads to several health issues like liver failure, scarring of the liver, liver cancer and also leads to death.

Hepatitis B spreads through infected bodily fluids like semen and vaginal discharges. Hepatitis B virus is 50 to 100 times more dangerous and infectious than HIV virus. Hepatitis B virus also spreads in the same way how a HIV or AIDS virus spread. Most of the people who are affected with Hepatitis B virus do not know that they are infected with it.

What happens when Hepatitis B infects

Hepatitis B leads to little infection in most of the people i.e. in up to 95% of the people who get infected have limited infection. Most of the people successfully develops an immunity system to fight against the virus and may also get well within few months. Once when our body develops immunity towards Hepatitis it will last forever i.e. they won’t get infected again. Though we can see the presence of immunity through tests but there won’t be any signs of infection. But sadly up to 90% of infants and 30 to 50% of young children tend to have a chronic infection.

Though most of the adults who are infected with Hepatitis B recover totally from the infection, in few cases people can’t overcome the disease and becomes carriers i.e. they can transmit Hepatitis B disease to other people even when they don’t have any symptoms of the disease. Few people who carry the disease for long time gets effected with chronic Hepatitis B. Chronic Hepatitis B is a long term infection of liver which can further cause cirrhosis. Cirrhosis is also called as hardening of the liver, it damages the liver tissues and the liver collapses and stops working.

The person who is infected with Hepatitis B should avoid donating body fluids, plasma, organs, tissues, sperms and so on as they also carry the disease or virus. It is very important for the individuals to discuss about their condition with doctors, their partners and dentist that they got infected with Hepatitis B and are the carriers of the disease.

Is Hepatitis B common?

Many Americans approximately 19,200 get infected with Hepatitis B every year, but still the rates have come down since 1980, where 2, 08,000 people get infected each year. Due to high use of HBV vaccine the infection rates have come down vastly. It is also estimated that up to 2.2 million people have chronic Hepatitis B.