A Mathematical Framework to Estimate Chronic Hepatitis B Prevalence and Undiagnosed Proportion (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) remains a significant health burden for at least a hundred thousand Canadians. The government of Canada has endorsed the Global Strategy to eliminate hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030, but effectively targeting public health interventions is complicated by the silent nature of the disease, which can remain asymptomatic for decades. OBJECTIVE This study develops a framework to estimate the prevalence of chronic hepatitis B and the proportion of the infected population that remains undiagnosed. We apply the proposed method to national data from Canada, from 2007 to 2021. METHODS We infer the prevalence and undiagnosed proportion of CHB by fitting a mathematical state-transition model, based on the natural history of chronic hepatitis B, to observed CHB-related events. RESULTS We estimate the national prevalence of CHB in Canada in 2021 to be 0.308% (95% CI: 0.252% - 0.363%). The corresponding percentage of undiagnosed cases was estimated to be 33.9% (95% CI: 22.7% - 45.1%). CONCLUSIONS The estimates of CHB prevalence obtained via our method are in line with previous estimates obtained from national seroprevalence studies. More specialized estimates, stratified by province or age cohort, may be achievable with detailed health administrative data.