Antibody response to revaccination among adult non-responders to primary Hepatitis B vaccination in China

Abstract

About 10% adult failed to develop antibody response after primary hepatitis B vaccination, and revaccination may be an option to improve immune response, but the antibody responses to revaccination in adult non-responders have not been fully examined. Adult non-responders to primary 3-dose hepatitis B vaccination were randomly divided into 2 groups and revaccinated with 20 μg hepatitis B vaccine (HepB) derived from Saccharomyces Cerevisiae (HepB-SC) or 20 μg HepB derived from Chinese hamster ovary cells (HepB-CHO), respectively, at 0-, 1-, 6- month. Seroconversion rate and titer of antibody against hepatitis B surface antigen (anti-HBs) was measured one month after the 1st and 3rd revaccination dose. Anti-HBs seroconversion rates significantly increased from 54.98% [95% confidence interval (CI) 48.60%–61.24%] after the 1st revaccination dose to 89.24% (95% CI: 84.74%–92.79%) after the 3rd revaccination dose (P < 0.001), and the geometric mean titer (GMT) of anti-HBs increased from 12.18mIU/ml (95%CI: 7.81–18.98 mIU/ml) to 208.31 mIU/ml (95% CI: 148.87–291.47 mIU/ml) (P = 0.008).Compared with those with anti-HBs titer <2 mIU/ml after primary vaccination, those with antibody titer ≥2 mIU/ml after primary vaccination had higher seroconversion rate after the 1st dose revaccination (38.36% vs. 78.10%, P < 0.001) and after the 3rd dose of revaccination (84.25% vs. 96.19%, P = 0.003), and had higher antibody titer after the 1st dose of revaccination (3.32mIU/ml vs. 74.21mIU/ml, P < 0.0001) and after the 3rd dose of revaccination (145.73mIU/ml vs. 342.34mIU/ml, P = 0.01). Anti-HBs titer was significantly higher in those revaccinated with HepB-CHO than those revaccinated with HepB-SC after the 3rd dose (131.46 mIU/ml vs. 313.38mIU/ml, P = 0.01). Revaccination on adult HepB non-responders increased the immune response to HepB and may confer further protection against hepatitis B virus infection. If possible, revaccination might be an option to HepB non-responders to secure more protection.

Keywords:

• adult non-responders
• antibody response
• hepatitis B vaccine
• revaccination

Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

Acknowledgments

We thank our colleagues at Zhangqiu County CDC of Shandong Province for their help in data collection. We also thank Ms. Jing Wang for her assistance with word editing.

Funding

This study was supported by the grants from the Major Project of National Science and Technology (No. 2012ZX100022001, 2013ZX10004902) and from the Shandong Medical and Health Science and Technology Development Programs (No. 2009QZ017, 2014WS0373).

Ethical Statement

Shandong CDC Ethics Committee approved the protocol and consent forms were signed before starting.