Abstract
Worldwide, 350 million people are infected with the hepatitis B virus, one of five viruses that cause hepatitis that, in turn, increase the risk of chronic liver disease and liver cancer. Hepatitis B infection is especially prevalent in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, some of Chen's earliest work showed that hepatitis B infection in his homeland of Taiwan was far higher than in the West. Based on those findings, Chen worked to create a public health program in Taiwan that, for the past 23 years, has vaccinated nearly all of the newborns there against hepatitis B. The program already has reduced some forms of liver disease and, over the next several decades, should reduce it further or even eliminate it. Chen and his colleagues also have studied the molecular nuts and bolts of how hepatitis causes liver diseases. In his Inaugural Article (1), they report on a mechanism that may explain why hepatitis B causes liver cancer in males more than five times as often as females.
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