Hepatitis B virus infection was found to be prevalent in U.S.
households, according to a new analysis of the National Health and
Nutrition Examination Survey, published in Hepatology.
Henry Roberts, PhD, division
of viral hepatitis, CDC, and colleagues analyzed data from the National
Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from three time
periods; 1988 to 1994, 1999 to 2006 and 2007 to 2012 to address the
current prevalence and burden of HBV in the U.S. Between 2011 and 2012,
estimates of HBV prevalence among non-Hispanic Asians were oversampled.
“In the United States, the National Notifiable
Disease System (NNDSS), … is the main way of ‘counting [HBV] cases,’
but it is a passive system,” the researchers wrote. “Not all states and
localities report persons with chronic HBV infections and, of those who
do, their ability to identify, verify, and report such cases is widely
variable. … [The] CDC has relied on analysis of serum from about 5,000
U.S. residents each year from the National Health and Examination
Survey, a survey representative of the U.S. non-institutionalized
household population, to estimate the prevalence of HBV infection.”
“Despite increasing immune protection in young persons vaccinated in
infancy, an analysis of chronic hepatitis B prevalence in racial and
ethnic populations indicates that during 2011 and 2012, there were
847,000 HBV infections in the non-institutionalized U.S. population,”
the researchers concluded. – by Melinda Stevens
Labels: US epidemiology