Review on Human Immune Response against Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) Infection

Hepatitis is a general term for an inflammation of the liver due to a variety of causes including metabolic diseases, drugs, alcohol, toxins, and viruses. Viruses are the most common causative agents of hepatitis today and infect many millions of individuals annually. Viral hepatitis encompasses several diseases and represents a global health problem. It induces major morbidity and mortality and places enormous demands on economic and medical resources. Several viruses that cause hepatitis have been isolated in the past decades: hepatitis A (formerly ‘infectious' hepatitis), hepatitis B (formerly ‘serum' hepatitis), and hepatitis C (formerly ‘non-A, non-B' hepatitis), hepatitis D (delta hepatitis), and hepatitis E (formerly ‘enterically transmitted non-A, non-B' hepatitis) [1]. Recently, a new virus (hepatitis G or GBV-C) has been identified as a sixth viral agent [2].