| Abstract: | Treatment of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) with nucleos(t)ide analogs is often required over a prolonged period to achieve durable virologic suppression. One barrier to the success of long-term therapy is the emergence of drug-resistant mutants. Current guidelines therefore recommend the most potent drugs with optimal resistance profiles, that is, entecavir and tenofovir are used as first-line monotherapies in CHB. Characteristics of the hepatitis B virus, the disease, the patient and the drug can influence the response to antiviral treatment and risk of relapse. This review discusses factors to consider maximizing the chances of successful long-term treatment of CHB, and provides an overview of the long-term efficacy and safety data that have become available over the 4–5 years since entecavir and tenofovir were first approved for the treatment of CHB. Recent findings on whether and under what circumstances long-term therapy of CHB might be stopped are also discussed. |
