Clinical characteristics of chronic hepatitis B virus infection in immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a significant, worldwide burden due to it’s high prevalence, and risk of complications, including cirrhosiand hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Current literature suggests that African patients with chronic hepatitis B are at higher risk for hepatocellulacarcinoma. The exact mechanism for the explanation for this observation is contentious and may be due to higher rates of chronicity, and/or exposure to hepatotoxins including aflatoxin. We sought to report the clinical characteristics of African born immigrants with chronic hepatitis referred to a liver clinic in New York City. A total of 111 patients were enrolled. 19 patients (17%) had cirrhosis, and 14 patients (13%) had HCC at initiapresentation. During the course of follow up, 13 patients (12%) died of complications of HBV, all of them related to HCC. Our case series revealed thaa significant proportion of these patients manifested advanced complications of HBV such as cirrhosis or HCC.