Prospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Sep 18, 2016; 8(26): 1105-1109
Published online Sep 18, 2016. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v8.i26.1105
Immune response to hepatitis B virus vaccine in celiac subjects at diagnosis
Martina Filippelli, Maria Teresa Garozzo, Antonino Capizzi, Massimo Spina, Sara Manti, Lucia Tardino, Carmelo Salpietro, Salvatore Leonardi
Martina Filippelli, Maria Teresa Garozzo, Antonino Capizzi, Massimo Spina, Lucia Tardino, Salvatore Leonardi, Department of Medical and Pediatric Sciences, University of Catania, 95100 Catania, Italy
Sara Manti, Carmelo Salpietro, Department of Pediatric Sciences, University of Messina, 98100 Messina, Italy
Author contributions: Filippelli M, Garozzo MT and Leonardi S revised the manuscript for final submission; Filippelli M, Capizzi A, Manti S, Tardino L and Salpietro C contributed to writing of the article; Garozzo MT analyzed the data; Spina M performed the research; Leonardi S designed the study; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University Hospital “Policlinico Vittorio Emanuele”.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardians, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest related to the manuscript.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
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: Dr. Salvatore Leonardi, Professor, Department of Medical and Pediatric Sciences, University of Catania, Via S Sofia 78, 95100 Catania, Italy. leonardi@unict.it
Telephone: +39-9-53782764 Fax: +39-9-53782895
Received: May 20, 2016
Peer-review started: May 20, 2016
First decision: July 4, 2016
Revised: July 14, 2016
Accepted: July 29, 2016
Article in press: August 1, 2016
Published online: September 18, 2016
Processing time: 117 Days and 7.7 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Correlation between celiac disease and lower response to hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccine has been demonstrated, but the causes remain unclear. The lack of prospective data represents an extensive gap between the time of vaccination and development of the immune response, contributing to select “false non-responders” (i.e., those who are destined to lose the antibody titer over time). The originality of our prospective study is that of analyzing the response to HBV vaccine in a group of celiac patients at the time of diagnosis in an attempt to nullify the percentage of error related to confounding factors.