Hepatitis B Virus and Antigen-Antibody Complex Diseases

Abstract

Infection with the hepatitis B virus (HBV) can induce a variety of responses in human beings. Physicians generally think first of acute hepatitis, a disease characterized by a relatively long incubation period, the appearance in the blood, during the prodromal and acute phases, of the surface antigen of the hepatitis B virus (HB_s Ag) and the clinical symptoms and signs of malaise, nausea, vomiting, fever, right-upper-quadrant tenderness and jaundice. The disease, in 90 per cent of the cases, is self-limited with disappearance of HB_s Ag and clinical recovery occurring from four to six weeks after onset. Such patients, . . .