Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jul 28, 2016; 22(28): 6484-6500
Published online Jul 28, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i28.6484
Prevention and management of hepatitis B virus reactivation in patients with hematological malignancies treated with anticancer therapy
Man Fai Law, Rita Ho, Carmen KM Cheung, Lydia HP Tam, Karen Ma, Kent CY So, Bonaventure Ip, Jacqueline So, Jennifer Lai, Joyce Ng, Tommy HC Tam
Man Fai Law, Carmen KM Cheung, Lydia HP Tam, Karen Ma, Kent CY So, Bonaventure Ip, Jacqueline So, Jennifer Lai, Joyce Ng, Tommy HC Tam, Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, Prince of Wales Hospital, Hong Kong, China
Rita Ho, Department of Medicine, North District Hospital, Hong Kong, China
Author contributions: Law MF designed the research topic; all authors contributed to the literature search, analysis and writing the paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Man Fai Law, Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, Prince of Wales Hospital, Shatin, Hong Kong, China. mflaw99@yahoo.com.hk
Telephone: +852-97763090
Received: April 1, 2016
Peer-review started: April 7, 2016
First decision: May 12, 2016
Revised: May 24, 2016
Accepted: June 15, 2016
Article in press: June 15, 2016
Published online: July 28, 2016
Processing time: 111 Days and 21.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Hepatitis due to hepatitis B virus (HBV) reactivation can be severe and potentially fatal. All patients with hematological malignancies receiving anticancer therapy should be screened for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) and antibody to hepatitis B core antigen. Patients found to be positive for HBsAg should be given prophylactic antiviral therapy. For patients with resolved HBV infection, either pre-emptive therapy guided by serial HBV DNA monitoring or prophylactic antiviral therapy, especially for patients receiving high-risk therapy are reasonable options. Further studies are needed to find out the best prophylactic strategy in the era of targeted therapy for hematological malignancies.