What should I do if I think I might have hepatitis B
Hepatitis B Symptoms
Common hepatitis B symptoms are:
| • | Tiredness |
| • | Loss of appetite or not feeling hungry |
| • | Nausea or feeling sick to your stomach |
| • | Stomach pain |
| • | Yellow skin or yellowing of the whites of your eyes (jaundice) |
| • | Dark coloured urine |
| • | Clay or whitish coloured bowel movements |
| • | Pain in your joints |
In many cases, a person with the infection will not have any hepatitis B symptoms. However, you can still pass the infection to others and not know it. The older you are, the more likely you are to have hepatitis B symptoms.
Hepatitis B Tests
The only sure way to know if you are infected with the hepatitis B virus is to visit a healthcare provider and get a hepatitis B blood test. This hepatitis B blood test will determine if you have the virus and will give your healthcare provider important information about how the virus is affecting your health.
There are other hepatitis tests that can tell your healthcare provider if liver damage has occurred. These are complicated tests so you should ask your healthcare provider to explain the results.
