Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is still one of the most important causes of liver disease, with 2billion people infected worldwide and more than 600,000 deaths each year, caused in 94% of cases by chronic infection-related cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) [1–3]. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates more than 360million persons being chronic carriers worldwide (6% of the world population). The incidence of HBV infection has been declining over the last two decades thanks to the introduction of universal immunization programs and the implementation of blood-donor screening.
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Paganelli et al. (2012) studied this question.
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