Abstract

Hepatitis B virus infection is still a major public health problem worldwide, since more than 350 million people have chronic, lifelong infection and nearly 1 million deaths occur each year owing to complications. Most infections are acquired at birth or during early childhood. Nowadays, low- and middle-income countries bear the majority of the burden of hepatitis B-related liver cancer deaths despite the availability of an effective vaccine and antiviral treatments. In this review the epidemiology, strategies of prevention and the recent advances in therapy, genotype diversity and resistance are discussed.