Hepatitis B vaccine best administered to children before end-stage liver disease.(Brief Article)

2002 SEP 25 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- by Sonia Nichols, senior medical writer - Children with chronic renal failure can develop immunity to hepatitis B virus (HBV) after being vaccinated, but they are afforded the most protection when they receive the 3-dose vaccine regimen before developing end-stage renal disease.

The announcement was made in a study coauthored by researchers from the University of Washington Children's Hospital in Seattle. Joined by collaborators from the University of Texas Southwestern, Baylor College of Medicine, Medical City Dallas Hospital, and Merck Research Laboratories, the group investigated vaccine protection and tolerance in 78 children and adolescents with various stages of kidney disease who were given two or three doses of the HBV vaccine Recombivax HB at 20 micrograms per dose.

Among the 78 children with chronic renal failure were included 22 not yet on dialysis, 42 on dialysis, and 14 recipients of kidney transplantations, according to Sandra L. Watkins and colleagues at the Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, Washington.

"The vaccine was well tolerated, no patient had a serious adverse event attributable to vaccine, and no patient withdrew from the study because of an adverse event," Watkins and coauthors reported.

Sixty-six of the children were able to receive all three doses of Recombivax HB. Ninety percent of those children developed antibody levels high enough to provide protection against HBV infection. Though all of the predialysis patients achieved seroprotection, only 64% of the kidney transplant recipients did. More than 90% of those on dialysis became protected from infection after receiving all three ...