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Abstract
During less than one year, 5 cases of hepatitis B (HB) occurred among patients and staff at an institution for the mentally retarded. The common source of infection was thought to be the only one carrier of hepatitis B antigen (HBAg) diagnosed amongst a total of 13 patients with Down's syndrome (DS), a patient transferred from another institution 5 months before the occurrence of the first case of HB. Persistent carriers of HBAg among patients with DS evidently present a great risk for transmitting HB in contrast to healthy carriers in the general population. Subtyping of HBAg revealed the type ad in all patients in agreement with an epidemiological unity of these cases of HB. In a further 63 individuals with antigenemia at 5 other institutions the subtype ad was uniformly found. This is in contrast to the subtype, i.e. ay, presently dominating among acute cases of HB in Sweden.