Thirty years after 1,086 infants born to women infected with hepatitis B were immunized, the vaccine continues to protect 92.6 percent of them from infection, according to a landmark study conducted in Hong Kong.
What is significant is the vaccine, administered in three doses, has continued to protect these individuals over decades even after their hepatitis B antibodies (titers) began to decline. Some of these infants received their second and third dose of the vaccine on an accelerated or delayed schedule, and still it protected them even though they live in a region with high HBV infection rates.
Of the 39 who developed chronic hepatitis B despite receiving the vaccine and HBIG at birth, nearly all were born to mothers who were hepatitis B “e” antigen (HBeAg) positive and who had high levels of virus (HBV DNA) in their blood, according to the report in the
Journal of Hepatology.
Read more