How to recognize the most insidious liver disease

Question from the reader:

- A couple of weeks ago, I suddenly felt a strange malaise: my appetite disappeared and an aversion to food appeared, I felt terrible weakness. The neighbor said that the liver should be checked. What do you say?

Hepatologist Vitaly Yanchenko answers:

- I agree with your neighbor. If the liver is affected, a person begins to experience chronic fatigue syndrome: weakness, lethargy, and fatigue appear. And every fifth to sixth person is infected with hepatitis B without jaundice. With hepatitis C, the majority of such people - 84 percent, and many do not even know that they are sick.

Hepatitis resembles a mild cold: the temperature rises slightly, there is pain under the spoon, nausea, appetite disappears. But a person is in no hurry to see a doctor, and in a few weeks the condition improves. However, acute hepatitis turns into chronic in almost every fifth person.

The hepatitis B virus is very resistant and is located in the nucleus of the cell, until it dies itself or is defeated by the immune system. It kills the "enemy", but with it the cells.

This type of hepatitis is the most infectious of all viral "brothers": it is much easier to catch it than HIV infection.

Symptoms of hepatitis B

• temperature rise up to 38 degrees;

• weakness and lethargy;

• joint pain (joint syndrome);

• loss of appetite;

• often slight enlargement of the liver;

• jaundice, but every fifth to sixth patient has a jaundice-free form.