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The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a recommendation for healthcare providers to increase routine testing for chronic hepatitis B, a major cause of liver disease and liver cancer. The CDC now recommends testing all individuals born in Asia and Africa, men who have sex with men, and injection-drug users. That's an expansion from testing all pregnant women, infants born to mothers with hepatitis B, household contacts and sex partners of infected individuals, and people with HIV.

The CDC estimates chronic hepatitis B to be the underlying cause of 2,000 to 4,000 deaths annually in the U.S. from cirrhosis and liver cancer. As many as 1.4 million Americans are unaware they are infected because they lack symptoms, the CDC says.

The new recommendations also advise healthcare providers to provide culturally sensitive ongoing patient education, begin lifelong monitoring for progression of liver disease, and ensure protection of close contacts with infected persons.

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