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For patients with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection who achieve only partial virologic response (PVR) to initial therapy, current guidelines advise adding a second oral antiviral agent or switching to a more potent agent. However, this recommendation is based on studies that used retrospective data and evaluated less-potent antiviral agents such as lamivudine and telbivudine rather than more-potent, first-line agents such as tenofovir and entecavir.
To investigate whether entecavir could achieve virologic response in both treatment-naive and treatment-experienced patients with HBV infection beyond 1 year of treatment, researchers enrolled 333 patients (243 treatment-naive and 143 hepatitis B e antigen [HBeAg]-positive) from multiple …