Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jul 21, 2017; 23(27): 4942-4949
Published online Jul 21, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i27.4942
Perinatal transmission in infants of mothers with chronic hepatitis B in California
Jennifer C Burgis, Darryl Kong, Catheryn Salibay, Jennifer Zipprich, Kathleen Harriman, Samuel So
Jennifer C Burgis, Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 94304, United States
Darryl Kong, Catheryn Salibay, Jennifer Zipprich, Kathleen Harriman, California Department of Public Health, Immunization Branch, Richmond, CA 94804, United States
Samuel So, Asian Liver Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 94304, United States
Author contributions: Burgis JC, Kong D, Salibay C, Zipprich J, Harriman K and So S contributed equally to this work; Burgis JC, Kong D, Salibay C, Zipprich J, Harriman K and So S designed the research; Burgis JC, Kong D, Salibay C, Zipprich J and Harriman K performed the research; Kong D and Salibay C analyzed the data; Burgis JC, Kong D, Salibay C, Zipprich J, Harriman K and So S wrote the paper.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the California Health and Human Services Agency Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects and the Stanford University Human Subjects Research and Institutional Review Board.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There are no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code and dataset available upon request from author Jennifer Zipprich (jennifer.zipprich@cdph.ca.gov).
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Jennifer C Burgis, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University, 750 Welch Road, Suite 116, Palo Alto, CA 94304, United States. jburgis@stanford.edu
Telephone: +1- 650-7235070 Fax: +1- 650-4985608
Received: March 24, 2017
Peer-review started: March 29, 2017
First decision: April 25, 2017
Revised: May 11, 2017
Accepted: June 18, 2017
Article in press: June 19, 2017
Published online: July 21, 2017
Processing time: 120 Days and 0.7 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Most infants born to hepatitis B surface antigen positive woman in California received appropriate post exposure prophylaxis and vaccination but a low postvaccination serologic testing rate represents a missed opportunity to identify chronically infected infants needing lifelong medical care. Overall the perinatal transmission rate in California is low at 1.1% and only high maternal hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA level predicts risk for perinatal transmission. Maternal HBV DNA is a vital prenatal screen if targeted antiviral therapy for high-risk mothers becomes a strategy to reduce transmission.