[Chronic active hepatitis with superinfection of delta virus and hepatitis B virus: treatment with Chinese traditional medicine].

ABSTRACT

Among the 136 patients of HBsAg positive chronic hepatitis admitted from November 1986 to June 1988, 110 patients gave consent to have liver biopsy and out of the 110 liver biopsies 86 were confirmed histologically to be chronic active hepatitis. After screening the 86 patients twice with ELISA (ABBOTT ANTI-DELTA EIA), 26 (30.23%) showed positive results twice. Though it was reported that the incidence of delta hepatitis infection is very low in the HBsAg carriers in Beijing area, the incidence of superinfection of delta hepatitis on chronic active hepatitis B seems to be considerably high (30.23%) as shown in this study. Histological examination revealed that in the liver of patients with superinfection of delta hepatitis on chronic active hepatitis (26 cases) there were more severe changes and more eosinophilic degeneration than in the liver of patients without superinfection (58 cases). The patients were allocated to 3 groups at random. Eleven cases of chronic active hepatitis, with superinfection were treated with Chinese traditional medicine Xiao Chai Hu Tang (XCHT), 5 cases with biphenyl dimethyl dicarboxylate (BDD) and 10 cases with XCHT + BDD. It was noted that after 3 months of treatment, in the XCHT group, HBeAg became negative in 2/3, anti-HBe converted to positive in 2/8 and HBV-DNA converted to negative in 2/2. SGPT became normal in 8/8. XCHT showed a fairly good result and deserves further study.