Reactivation risk of Hepatitis B Virus in both HBsAg negative and HBcIgG positive patients with solid malignancy. Is antiviral prophylaxis really necessary?

Abstract

Prophylactic antiviral treatment is controversial due to a lack of studies in both HBsAg negative/HBcIgG positive patients who treated conventional chemotherapy with solid malignancy, unlike HBsAg positive. In this cross-sectional and retrospective study, we analyzed that the reactivation risk of Hepatitis B Virus (HBVr) of totally 457 HBcIgG positive patients with solid cancer in archives records between 2011 and 2018 years of two different centers. Totally 217 HBcIgG positive patients with solid cancer were included in the study. Anti-HBs positive and negative patients were 119 (54.8%) and 98 (45.2%), respectively. Frequent diagnosis of the patients was lung (28.1%), colorectal (19.4%), breast (17.5%) and hepatobiliary tract cancers (8.3%), respectively. Most of the study population had stage 4 disease (48.8%) and received palliative chemotherapy. When the patients were stratified due to American Gastroenterological Association Institute (AGA) guideline, HBVr risk of chemo regimen was moderate in 21 patients (17.5%), low in 8 patients (3.7%). The majority of the patients were undefined risk group (78.8%). We did not determine any HBVr in the patients who have received different conventional chemotherapy regimens and have different primer tumor site despite all the patients did not receive the prophylactic antiviral drug.