What does it mean to be chronically infected with hepatitis B virus?
People who do not recover from HBV infection are chronically infected, and there are over one million chronically infected people in the United States today. A chronically infected person is someone who has had HBV in her/his blood for more than six months. While approximately 5% of adults who acquire HBV infection become chronically infected, children less than five years of age have a greater risk. The younger the child is at the time of infection, the greater the risk that the child will have a lifelong infection. Many babies born to chronically infected mothers will also become chronically infected with HBV unless the babies are given two shots in the hospital and at least two more during the 6 months after birth to protect them from the infection. A chronically infected person usually has no signs or symptoms of HBV infection but remains infected for years or for a lifetime and is capable of passing HBV on to others. Sometimes chronically infected people will spontaneously clear t
