Indications for antiviral therapy for chronic hepatitis B in pregnant mothers

Eric Raeyoon Yoo1, Ryan Babu Perumpail2, George Cholankeril3

  • 1Department of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

BMJ Case Reports
|November 18, 2016
PubMed

The use of antiviral therapy for chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in the setting of pregnancy needs to be individualised based on limited data. We report a case of a 34-year-old Korean-American woman with a history of pregnancy with emergent caesarean section due to prolonged labour in the setting of HBV e-antigen (HBeAg) positive chronic HBV with a pretreatment baseline HBV DNA level of 110000 000 million copies per mL. Her first delivery was complicated by mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HBV infection to her daughter despite standard active and passive immunoprophylaxis. Our case report highlights an important clinical decision-making step regarding the timing of antiviral therapy in the management of chronic HBV in pregnant women with high risk of MTCT.

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