Interpretation of Hepatitis B Virus Results (HBV)

Use this table to interpret test results and to understand the status of your Hepatitis B patients.

Tests	Results	Interpretation
HBsAg HBcAb, Total HBsAb	Negative Negative Negative	Susceptible
HBsAg HBcAb, Total HBsAb	Negative Positive Positive	Immune due to natural infection
HBsAg HBcAb, Total HBsAb	Negative Negative Positive	Immune due to Hepatitis B vaccination
HBsAg HBcAb, Total HBcAb, IgM HBsAb	Positive Positive Positive Negative	Acutely infected
HBsAg HBcAb, Total HBcAb, IgM HBsAb	Positive Positive Negative Negative	Chronically infected
HBsAg HBcAb, Total HBsAb	Negative Positive Negative	Four interpretations possible*

May be recovering from acute HBV infection
May be distantly immune and test not sensitive enough to detect very low level of HBsAb in serum
May be susceptible with a false positive HBcAb, Total
May be undetectable level of HbsAg present in the serum and the person is actually a carrier

Test	Name
HBsAg	Hepatitis B surface antigen
HBcAb, Total	Total antibody (IgM and IgG) to hepatitis B core antigen
HBcAb, IgM	IgM antibody to hepatitis B core antigen
HBsAb	Antibody to hepatitis B surface antigen