I’ve been looking through my online doctor’s message area, and too many chronic hepatitis B infected patients are confused by the same questions, combined with recent studies, today I would like to try to reply to one question in an easy to understand language: Why should chronic hepatitis B be treated for a long time? 1. With the existing treatment regimens, it is very difficult to achieve complete clearance of hepatitis B surface antigen and hepatitis B virus; Zhang Yin, Department of Chinese and Western Medicine and Hepatology, Beijing Youan Hospital, Capital Medical University 2. The current standard anti-hepatitis B virus treatment drugs, i.e. nucleoside (acid) analogues, can only inhibit viral replication and cannot completely clear the virus. Its limited course of treatment makes it difficult to achieve a durable immune response after drug discontinuation. 3. Based on a large number of patients’ research data, the recommendations of global authoritative guidelines for antiviral regimens mainly include, according to the classification of E antigen-positive and negative, i.e., what we commonly call major and minor triple-positive patients, recommendations: Take the 2012 Asia-Pacific Liver Disease Guidelines as an example: It is recommended that for major triple-positive patients, antiviral regimens are recommended to last at least 12 months for HBeAg serological conversion with unpredictable HBVDNA. Patients with minor triplets: duration of therapy is unknown, but discontinuation may be considered after at least 2 years of treatment and at least 6 months between 3 consecutive retests with confirmed non-detectable HBVDNA. The 2012 European liver disease guidelines recommend long-term treatment for patients with major triplets until the disappearance of hepatitis B surface antigen, with or without the appearance of hepatitis B surface antibodies; for patients with minor triplets, it is directly recommended that long-term treatment be of unknown duration. 4, some patients also say, I just want to stop the drug, what can I do? Just like my first published article Will everyone be so lucky? Look at the numbers below A foreign study showed that patients with chronic hepatitis B treated with nucleoside (acid) analogs had a calculated time to clear hepatitis B surface antigen of more than 52 years after long-term follow-up and mathematical modeling based on the patient’s hepatitis B viral load and hepatitis B surface antigen titer. Complete clearance of intrahepatic viral DNA requires 14.5 years of antiviral therapy. There are also patients who have discontinued medication after having met the criteria for discontinuation recommended by the guidelines, and long-term follow-up by physicians has revealed that the data from a large number of domestic and foreign studies, with different amounts of study populations, have yielded findings confirming a 15.9-91.4% recurrence rate of hepatitis B at 1 year of discontinuation …… I will continue to share, in other mini-scientific articles, the benefits, and safety, of long-term anti-hepatitis B virus therapy. As I always tell my patients, please trust me and remember, it is a matter of probability but it must be, the benefits outweigh the risks.