The article “efficacy of hepatitis B vaccine in those who lost hepatitis B surface antigen during follow-up” published recently in Hepatitis Monthly (1), described the efficacy of HBV vaccine in chronic HBV patients who had been found negative for HBsAg and HBV DNA in sera. The manuscript was highlighted by an Editorial in the same issue (2). The manuscript dealt with a group of chronic HBV pat...

In the decade following hepatitis B vaccine's 1981 approval, U.S. health officials issued evolving guidelines on who should receive the vaccine: first, gay men, injection drug users, and healthcare workers; later, hepatitis B-positive women's children; and later still, all newborns. States laws that mandated the vaccine for all children were quietly accepted in the 1990s; in the 2000s, however,...

BACKGROUND During the past decade, in the United States, an increasing number of hepatitis B outbreaks have been reported in assisted living facilities (ALFs) as a result of breaches in infection control practices. We evaluated the seroprotection rates conferred by hepatitis B vaccine among older adults during a response to an outbreak that occurred in multiple ALFs and assessed the influence o...

BACKGROUND Infections contracted during infancy or childhood are responsible for 42 percent of case of chronic hepatitis B disease, and in 25 percent or more these infections result in death from hepatoma or cirrhosis during adulthood. Hepatitis B vaccine and immune globulin provide the means of preventing the disease and its sequelae, but their proper use requires clinical strategies for decid...

A literature search was carried out to investigate the factors that influence the protective efficacy (PE) of hepatitis B vaccines when given to neonates of hepatitis B surface antigen and e antigen positive mothers. Hepatitis B vaccines with either high or low antigen doses are very effective in preventing chronic hepatitis B infection in neonates at risk, but there is evidence that with lower...

Compliance with and responses to the hepatitis B vaccine were evaluated in remaining quilombo communities in Central Brazil. A total of 708 individuals who were susceptible to hepatitis B virus infection were invited to participate in the hepatitis B vaccination program in eight communities. Although 567 (80%) individuals received the first dose, only 198 (28%) complied with the full vaccinatio...

BACKGROUND Growing evidence suggests that it is possible to seroconvert chronic renal failure patients who are absolute non-responders to hepatitis B vaccine by means of either additional booster vaccine doses or associated IL-2 administration or both. We have studied the possibilities of hepatitis B seroconversion by revaccination and its dependence on vaccine dose, and the effects of a concur...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate viral vaccine antibody levels in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia after chemotherapy and after vaccine booster doses. METHODS Antibody levels against hepatitis B, rubella, measles and mumps vaccine antigens were evaluated in 33 children after completing chemotherapy (before and after vaccine booster doses) and the results were compared to the data of 33 healthy...

Hepatitis B antibody persistence was assessed in individuals who had previously received a vaccine booster. We measured hepatitis B surface antigen antibody (anti-HBs) levels 7 to 9 years post-hepatitis B booster in individuals with primary vaccination at birth. While 95 (91.3%) of 104 participants had detectable anti-HBs (minimum, 0.1 mIU/ml; maximum, 1,029 mIU/ml), only 43 (41%) had protectiv...