Infant immune response to hepatitis B vaccine after fetal exposure to telbivudine

ABSTRACT

Whether telbivudine (LdT) treatment to pregnant women with hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) affects infant immune response to hepatitis B vaccine (HepB) has not been investigated. A total of 127 HBsAg positive mothers and their neonates were enrolled and followed up at 11–13 months. Mothers took LdT (LdT group) or did not receive antiviral therapy (control group). Infant anti-HBs, immune cells and cytokines were measured after HepB was administered according to 0-1-6 procedure. We performed a 1:3 propensity score matching (PSM). Immune indexes in the two groups were compared. Baseline characteristics of mother-baby pairs were comparable in LdT group and control group. Infant anti-HBs geometric mean concentration (GMC) did not differ significantly between the two groups [767.70 (745.35) vs. 711.90 (819.60), P = .599]. There was no difference between the two groups in infant positive rate of anti-HBs [97.8% (91/93) vs. 97.1% (33/34), P = .999] and strong positive rate of anti-HBs [40.9% (38/93) vs. 44.1% (15/34), P = .742]. Infants with negative, low, medium, and high anti-HBs levels were similarly distributed between the two groups (P = .511). No differences in proportion of helper T cells, cytotoxic T cells, B cells, myeloid dendritic cells, and plasmacytoid dendritic cells of infants (P > .05) were detected between the two groups. Children in the LdT and control group had comparable levels of interleukin-2, interleukin-4, interleukin-6, interleukin-10, interleukin-12, interferon-α, interferon-γ and tumor necrosis factor-α (P > .05). Intrauterine exposure to LdT was safe to infant immune response to HepB after birth.

KEYWORDS:

• Immune response
• hepatitis B vaccine
• prenatal exposure
• propensity score matching
• telbivudine

Acknowledgments

We thank all mothers and their children participated the study.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

Ethical appproval

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Shanxi Medical University and informed consent was obtained from all parents of the children.

Author contributions

Suping Wang and Yongliang Feng designed research; Bo Wang and Shuying Feng provided patients to the study; Wenxin Chen, Cong Jin, Ting Wang and Tian Yao collected data; Yandi Li analyzed data and wrote the paper; Yandi Li had primary responsibility for final content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. All authors have approved the final article.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website at https://doi.org/10.1080/21645515.2022.2029259.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 81872677, 81573212, and 82073622].