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Safety of HBV Vaccination During Pregnancy

Vaccine; ePub 2018 Sep 5; Groom, Irving, et al

Publish date:: October 6, 2018

Most women who received maternal hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccination did not have high-risk indications for vaccination, a recent study found. Researchers examined a retrospective cohort of pregnancies in the Vaccine Safety Datalink resulting in live birth outcomes from 2004 through 2015. They assessed the frequency of maternal hepatitis B vaccine (HepB) among pregnant women and evaluated the potential association between maternal vaccination and pre-specified maternal and infant safety outcomes. Pregnancies with HepB exposure were compared to those with other vaccine exposures, and to those with no vaccine exposures. Among the findings:

Among >650,000 pregnancies in the study period, HepB was administered at a rate of 2.1 per 100,000 pregnancies, commonly within the first 5 weeks of pregnancy.
Women had a low rate of high-risk conditions indicated for maternal vaccination.
Maternal HepB vaccination did not increase risk for adverse events.

Citation:

Groom HC, Irving SA, Koppolu P, et al. Uptake and safety of hepatitis B vaccination during pregnancy: A Vaccine Safety Datalink study. [Published online ahead of print September 5, 2018]. Vaccine. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2018.08.074.

Commentary:

I understand that very few clinicians would set out to give hepatitis B vaccination to a pregnant woman. Most of these woman were early in pregnancy and probably got the vaccine before the pregnancy was realized. I would imagine that most of these “low risk” patients got the vaccine for an occupational reason. This is yet another reason to try to complete the childhood immunization series while patients are still children. This study reassures us that if a pregnant woman got vaccinated with hepatitis B, that her child should not be affected. — John Russell, MD

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