Hospitalization costs of hepatitis B in Italy

Thanks to vaccination policies, Italy has a low (<1%) prevalence of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. However, costs related to HBV are still significant, especially in those who develop sequelae and require hospital services, which represent a large proportion of the expenditure of the health system for HBV. Also, the immigrant infected population is growing and has exceeded 200,000 units. In this study we estimated the direct costs due to hospitalization of HBV infection in Italy in the years 2008-2010 …