CDC vote looms on lifting recommended Hepatitis B vaccine for newborns
Catching Hepatitis B is wildly more dangerous for babies than adults.
Most adults quickly recover and become immune. But about 90% of newborns with Hepatitis B develop a long-haul version of the disease, then are at higher risk of liver cancer or cirrhosis.
Eventually, it kills about one in four people who were infected as newborns.
But how does a baby get Hepatitis B, commonly known as a sexually transmitted disease?
It is mostly transmitted from mother to baby during birth. Giving the vaccine right afterward usually beats the virus to the punch. Finishing the series of child booster shots cements it.
But the universal recommendation to vaccinate newborns against Hep B is up for reconsideration when the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meets Thursday and Friday in Atlanta. A vote to roll back the longstanding CDC guidance on the issue could come Thursday.
The committee was reconstituted under the Trump administration and is now entirely made up of members appointed by Health and Human Services Secretary, and vaccine skeptic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The committee is expected to consider returning the birth dose to a case-by-case basis, trying to just target babies of mothers who are proven to already have the disease.
That would be a mistake, said Atlanta pediatrician Dr. Robert Wiskind, past president of the Georgia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The Hepatitis B vaccine was discovered in Wiskind‘s lifetime. The universal birth dose came two years after he received his Georgia medical license. He can’t remember treating an infected child at his practice.
“It’s worked fantastically,” Wiskind said. “That targeted approach worked somewhat but missed people.”
President Donald Trump is on board with the change.
“There’s no reason to give a baby that’s almost just born hepatitis B (vaccine),” Trump said in September. “So I would say wait till the baby is 12 years old.”
Kennedy’s head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon, said in a Fox News interview that he personally thinks the evidence for the universal birth shot isn’t “solid.”
“It’s a sexually transmitted infection you’re trying to prevent,” Makary said. “Kids are not sexually active until they’re of sexual age.”
Mainstream pediatric scientists are pushing back against that rhetoric.
“More than 17,000 infants are born annually to women with (the Hepatitis B Virus), yet 18% of pregnant women do not receive hepatitis B testing,” the University of Minnesota’s Vaccine Integrity Project recently posted on social media. “Only 35% of women who test positive receive all recommended follow-up care.
“Delaying the first dose leaves infants vulnerable to both undiagnosed maternal infection and HBV exposure after birth.”
The Vaccine Integrity Project also notes that babysitters can transfer the virus to babies, through cuts or mucous membrane contact, and half of adults infected with Hepatitis B don’t know they have it.
The organization’s researchers looked at more than 400 studies, and found that the Hepatitis B vaccines were safe, causing only a brief fever and redness at the injection site.
Georgia has about 126,000 births a year, according to state data.
Insurance coverage of the vaccinations may depend on what the federal committee and the state recommend. A spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Public Health said it was too early to say what the implications for the state would be, until the federal committee actually settles on language and votes on it.
Wiskind said that damage is already being done, with parents balking at the Hep B birth dose.
“This is already making a pediatrician’s job harder,” Wiskind said. “Delaying the Hepatitis B vaccine by a month may not seem like a lot. But it will result in kids getting Hepatitis B unnecessarily and having long-term complications.”
About the Author
Ariel Hart is a reporter on health care issues. She works on the AJC’s health team and has reported on subjects including the Voting Rights Act and transportation.
