Hepatitis B in Pregnant Woman

In the hospital where I studying obstetric and gynecologic, there is a procedure for checking blood in every pregnant woman who comes to the maternal room. The blood test also consists of checking the HbSAg. As we know, HBsAG stands for hepatitis B surface antigen. It indicates current Hepatitis B infection.

The poor thing is, I find out that the number for positive HbsAg in pregnant women in the hospital which do my study is not small. Almost 2-5% perhaps.

So how does the baby? Will the baby suffer the same disease like his/her mom? In college, I remember something important. The newborn from Hepatitis B-infected mom must be shot with hepatitis vaccine.

Giving this birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine helps prevent missing babies who have a mother that has an unknown hepatitis B infection, either because testing wasn't done or there is a testing mistake. It also avoids the situation in which the mother has a known hepatitis B infection, but the baby misses her hepatitis B shot anyway.

According to the CDC, giving a birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine is a good idea because:

1. It provides 'a "safety net" to prevent perinatal infection among infants born to HBsAg-positive mothers who are not identified because of errors in maternal HBsAg testing or failures in reporting of test results'

2. The birth dose 'provides early protection to infants at risk for infection after the perinatal period'

3. Infants who get the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine have 'higher rates of on-time completion of the hepatitis B vaccine series'

4. It reduces the risk that a child could get hepatitis B later in childhood, even if he isn't at risk now from a mother with hepatitis B, since they could be exposed to another caregiver or family member with hepatitis B

Most importantly, although young children often have no symptoms when they develop a hepatitis B infection, they are very likely to go on to develop problems with chronic hepatitis. In fact, 90% of children who develop hepatitis before they are 12 months old will go on to develop chronic hepatitis B, for which there is no cure and few reliable treatments.