Assessment of the prevalence of vertical hepatitis B transmission in two consecutive generations

Abstract

Introduction: Hepatitis B is an important public health problem in the world and one of the forms of contagion would be through vertical transmission. Precose diagnosis allows the adoption of prophylaxis measures, which results in prevention in more than 90% of cases. Objective: To describe the prevalences of vertical transmission and compare two generations (mother/patient and patient/child). Method: This was a cross-sectional study, which included 101 patients. The interviews were performed through the application of the instrument of data collection and information of the physical file before the medical consultation. Results: The mean ± SD of age was 50.9 ± 13.1 years, the male gender predominated, with 56.4% of the patients, and the predominance was white, with 43.6%. Vertical transmission between mother and patient occurred in 17.8% and between patient and child, in 7.9%. In all of the eight cases of vertical transmission, the diagnosis was after the birth of children infected with HBV, and in 3/8 (37.5%), there was more than one case of infection by this mechanism per patient, totaling 13 children with the disease. Conclusion: There was a reduction in vertical transmission, showing that preventive measures were effective.

Intense intrafamilial transmission of HBV in a rural area in Egypt is a probable cause of non-response to vaccination: A cross-sectional-seroprevalence-community-study.

“…Contrary to this, the association of isolated HBcAb with HBV DNA may represent a variant of chronic HBV infection with undetectable levels of HBsAg [33]. Many studies reported low infectivity from OBI cases probably due to the low viremia particularly in anti-HBs positive individuals [37][38][39].…”

“…However, in this study, all the HBsAg carriers were HBeAg negative/HBeAb positive and had low to moderate viral load. Therefore, the probability of perinatal transmission might be low as 10-20% [37].…”