After understanding the best time to get an antiviral, the next step should be to find out what antiviral drugs are available, what are their advantages and disadvantages, and how to choose these drugs. Today I would like to introduce the classification of antiviral drugs and their advantages and disadvantages. Currently, there are two major classes of seven drugs available for antiviral treatment of chronic hepatitis B, including common interferon, pegylated interferon, and nucleoside (acid) analogs. Nucleoside (acid) analogs can be divided into three categories: L-nucleoside analogs (lamivudine, telbivudine, and emtricitabine), deoxyguanosine analogs (entecavir), and acyclic nucleoside phosphate compounds (adefovir and tenofovir). Lamivudine, adefovir, entecavir, tipifovir and tenofovir are approved in Europe for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B. However, the only drugs currently available in China are lamivudine, adefovir, entecavir and tipifovir. The advantages and disadvantages of the two main classes of drugs are discussed below. The first class is interferon. The purpose of clearing hepatitis B is achieved by improving the body’s immune clearance ability. The advantages are that the course of treatment is relatively short, relatively fixed, usually one year, immunomodulatory effect, not easy to produce drug resistance, once the goal of major triplet to minor triplet, HBVDNA negative, then less rebound after stopping the drug. The disadvantage is that it requires injection, which is not very convenient, and there are some adverse reactions such as fever, loss of appetite, decrease in white blood cells platelets, etc., but these reactions are tolerated by most patients and are reversible, and generally disappear after stopping the drug. Regarding the cost, the domestic interferon usually needs to be injected every other day and costs about 15,000 a year; the imported pegylated interferon alpha, which is injected once a week, costs about 60,000 a year. The second category of nucleotide analogs. The advantages are that it is convenient to take only orally, one tablet per day, and the adverse effects are rare and mild and easily accepted by patients. The disadvantages are that there is no immunomodulatory effect, the course of treatment is long and irregular, at least 2 years, the possibility of drug resistance with long-term use, and rebound is more common after stopping the drug. Generally speaking, for young patients, no major underlying disease, who wish to end the course of treatment in a short period of time, you can choose interferon. For older patients with more underlying diseases, as well as patients with cirrhosis, oral nucleotide analogue therapy can be chosen, but patients must be reminded to review regularly to monitor the occurrence of drug resistance, and not to stop the drug at will, and must follow medical advice.