Help!!!! Please explain the action of hepatitis B virus that causes liver damage....?

thanks for your help!!! (in advance)

Hepatitis is a disorder in which viruses or other mechanisms produce inflammation in liver cells, resulting in their injury or destruction. The liver is the largest organ in the body, occupying the entire upper right quadrant of the abdomen. It performs over 500 vital functions. Among them are the following:

*It processes all of the nutrients the body requires, including proteins, glucose, vitamins, and fats.

*The liver manufactures bile, the greenish fluid stored in the gallbladder that helps digest fats.

*One of the liver's major contributions to life is to render harmless potentially toxic substances, including alcohol, ammonia, nicotine, drugs, and harmful by-products of digestion.

*Old red blood cells are removed from the blood by the liver and spleen, and the iron contained in them is recycled to the bone marrow to make new red blood cells.

Damage to the liver can impair these and many other processes. Hepatitis varies in severity from a self-limited condition with total recovery to a life-threatening or life-long disease. It can occur from many different causes:

In the most common hepatitis cases, specific viruses incite the immune system to fight off infections (called viral hepatitis). Specific immune factors become over-produced that cause injury.
Hepatitis can also result from an autoimmune condition, in which abnormal immune factors attack the body's own liver cells.
Inflammation of the liver can also occur from medical problems, drugs, alcoholism, chemicals, and environmental toxins.
No matter what the cause of hepatitis, it can take either an acute (short term) or chronic form (persistent). In some cases, acute hepatitis develops into a chronic condition, but chronic hepatitis can also occur on its own. Although chronic hepatitis is generally the more serious condition, patients having either condition can experience varying degrees of severity.

Acute Hepatitis. Acute hepatitis can begin suddenly or gradually, but it has a limited course and rarely lasts beyond one or two months. Usually there is only spotty liver cell damage and evidence of immune system activity, but on rare occasions, acute hepatitis can cause severe, even life-threatening, liver damage.

*Chronic Hepatitis. The chronic forms of hepatitis persist for prolonged periods. Experts usually categorize chronic hepatitis by indications of severity as one of the following:

*Chronic persistent hepatitis. Chronic persistent hepatitis is usually mild and nonprogressive or slowly progressive, causing limited damage to the liver.

*Chronic active hepatitis. Chronic active hepatitis involves extensive liver damage and cell injury beyond the portal tract. Source(s): CPh.T
http://www.hmh.net/adam/patientreports/0...

http://www.medhelp.org/forums/hepatitis/...
First of all, hepatitis means inflammation of the liver. Hepatitis B is inflammation of the liver caused by the hep B virus. It causes inflammation first (swelling), then fibrosis (hardening), and eventually will lead to cirrhosis.