Treatment of children with chronic hepatitis B infection shortens the time to seroconversion, but whether this affords a long-term benefit remains uncertain, say researchers from Canada.
None of the children (of 164 in the study) had hepatocellular carcinoma at baseline or developed HCC during the follow-up period that averaged 4.9 years, the authors report.
Six of the children were anti-HBe positive, and the remaining 168 were HBeAg positive. Seventy of the latter (40.2%) seroconverted to anti-HBe-positive status during the study, the report indicates, with seroconversion rates being higher among children treated with lamivudine or interferon-alpha (19/27, 70.4%) than among untreated children (51/147, 34.7%).
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