The effect of introduction of universal childhood hepatitis B immunization in South Africa on the prevalence of serologically negative hepatitis B virus infection and the selection of immune escape variants. |
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Authors: | K Hino Y Katoh E Vardas J Sim K Okita W F Carman |
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Affiliation: | First Department of Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, Yamaguchi University, 1-1-1 Minami Kogushi, Ube, Yamaguchi 755-8505, Japan. k.hino@po.cc.yamaguchi-u.ac.jp |
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Abstract: | The effect of universal hepatitis B vaccination on the prevalence of serologically negative hepatitis B virus infection (HBV) and the emergence of HBsAg variants is unknown. We prospectively studied two different cohorts of 12--24 month old children in South Africa. They consisted of the unvaccinated children (n=459) born before the introduction of universal vaccination and the vaccinated children (n=1213) between 1 and 2 years after the introduction of the vaccination program. The frequency of detecting HBV DNA by PCR was reduced from 6.5% in unvaccinated children to 0.3% in vaccinated children (P<0.00001). There were no unique amino acid substitutions within the major hydrophilic region of the S sequence in both pre- and post-vaccination samples. Universal childhood vaccination reduced the frequency of serologically negative HBV infection and did not necessarily lead to selection of escape variants. |
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