[Question #1627] HEP B
92 months ago
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92 months ago
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Edward W. Hook M.D.
92 months ago
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Welcome to our Forum. You are asking good questions. No vaccine is 100% effective for preventing infection but the hepatitis B vaccine is, as you point out, highly effective for preventing infection in exposed persons, making them more than 95% less likely to become infected than unvaccinated persons. Further, for those who do become infected, the vaccine causes a milder illness with a lower likelihood of both severe infection and chronic hepatitis B. Thus, when you consider that most people do not have transmissible hepatitis B and that the risk for infection if exposed is in the 1 in 100-1000% range (i.e. considerably less than 1%), vaccination makes the risk for acquisition of hepatitis B in vaccinated persons less than I in 100,000 IF exposed to an infectious partner.
In your case, your anti-HbsAB level is in the protective range indicating that your childhood vaccine is still leading to relatively high and therefore protective antibody levels. FYI and not relevant to you but for others who may be reading this, even when a vaccinated person has an antibody level of less than 100 miu, they have some degree of protection form infection.
Given your vaccine status, even if you MAY have been exposed, your risk for infection is very, very low. I would not be worried if I were you. EWH
92 months ago
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Edward W. Hook M.D.
92 months ago
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92 months ago
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Edward W. Hook M.D.
92 months ago
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Final answer. Hepatitis B antigen can appear in the blood of infected persons as early as five days after acquisition and virtually all infections result in detectable hepatitis B sAg by 30 days. Certainly if you had not detected antigen by 60 days you could be completely confident that you were not infected.
As this is your third question, as per Forum Guidelines this thread will be closed later today. Take care. EWH