TITLE

Hepatitis B virus infection among pregnant women in Taiwan: comparison between women born in Taiwan and other southeast countries

AUTHOR(S)

Ching-Chiang Lin; Hsiu-Shu Hsieh; Yu-Jie Huang; Yeou-Lih Huang; Ming-Kun Ku; Hsin-Chia Hung

PUB. DATE

January 2008

SOURCE

BMC Public Health;2008, Vol. 8, p49

SOURCE TYPE

Academic Journal

DOC. TYPE

Article

ABSTRACT

Background: Taiwan's national vaccination program has successfully decreased the prevalence of hepatitis B infection after twenty years of implementation and might be indirectly beneficial to the second generation. In this study, we compared the hepatitis B infection status of two groups: pregnant Taiwanese women and other Southeast Asian women, who because they had immigrated later in life to Taiwan by marriage to a Taiwanese man, had not been exposed to that vaccination program to evaluate the effect of hepatitis vaccination program on women of child-bearing age and further explored the potential impact of immigration on the hepatitis B public health policy in Taiwan. Methods: Data was collected from 10,327 women born in Taiwan and 1,418 women born in other Southeast Asian countries, both groups receiving prenatal examinations at Fooyin University Hospital between 1996 and 2005. The results of serum hepatitis B s-Antigen (HBsAg) and hepatitis B e-Antigen (HBeAg) tests and other demographic data were obtained by medical chart review. Results: The pregnant women from Taiwan had a higher HBsAg positive rate (15.5%) but lower HBeAg(+)/HBsAg(+) ratio (32.1%) than the women from other countries (8.9% and 52.4%). For those born before July, 1984, the period of no national vaccination program, Taiwanese women had a higher HBsAg positive rate than other Southeast Asian women (15.7% vs. 8.4%), but for women born after that day and before June 1986, the period of vaccination for high risk newborns, the HBsAg positive rates found to be slightly lower for Taiwanese women than for other Southeast Asian women (11.4% vs. 12.3%) and the difference was more significant (3.1% vs. 28.6%) after June 1986, the period of vaccination for all newborns. While the HBeAg(+)/HBsAg(+) ratios decreased with age in both groups, they were consistently higher in women from other Southeast Asian countries than in women born in Taiwan after age 20.

ACCESSION #

51489028

 

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