(Press-News.org) DALLAS – June 28, 2011 – UT Southwestern Medical Center maternal-fetal specialists have confirmed a potential new protocol to protect pregnant women who are at risk for hepatitis B, a health problem that affects 2 billion people worldwide.
An accelerated hepatitis B vaccination schedule for high-risk pregnant women was found effective and well-tolerated. The findings appear in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
While the normal three-shot regimen of hepatitis B vaccine for adults – given over a six-month period – has long been recommended for pregnant women, that schedule often proved unmanageable in the course of a pregnancy.
"It's difficult to get all three doses in pregnancy, and people tend to get lost to follow-up, especially high-risk populations," said Dr. Jeanne Sheffield, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UT Southwestern and lead author of the study.
The research team stepped up the process for pregnant women and used the normal three-shot dosage given to adults over a 12-week period. That regimen is the shortest recommended schedule in nonpregnant adults that still offers protective long-term immunity.
"Now that we've shown it's efficacious in pregnancy, people are interested," said Dr. Sheffield, who also heads UT Southwestern's maternal-fetal medicine fellowship program. "We've already received a number of requests for our specific protocol from physicians who see high-risk patients and are interested in starting a vaccination program."
In the U.S., nearly 1.5 million people live with chronic hepatitis B infection, and it is the underlying cause of 3,000 deaths per year. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommended in 1993 and in 2007 that pregnant women at risk for hepatitis B should receive vaccination.
Dr. Sheffield said, however, that health care providers seldom offer the hepatitis B vaccine series to reproductive-aged women because of lack of physician and patient education, patients' fear of vaccination and its purported side effects, and the overall reluctance to vaccinate pregnant women.
Even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports pregnancy is not a contraindication to hepatitis B vaccine, limited data were available on its use in pregnancy.
In the current study, conducted at Parkland Memorial Hospital, researchers enrolled high-risk women with a current diagnosis of a sexually transmitted disease, injection drug use or both, over a six-year period. Of 200 women enrolled, 168 received all three doses of the vaccine.
Researchers found that race, maternal age, tobacco and alcohol use, and gestational age at first vaccination did not affect seroconversion rates – the development of antibodies against hepatitis B – using the accelerated schedule. Obesity had a negative influence, however.
The accelerated schedule in pregnancy had seroconversion rates (90 percent) that were comparable to the standard schedule in healthy adults. The study also showed no increase in preterm delivery rates or neonatal intensive care admissions.
"The vaccine was well-tolerated in our pregnant women, and no serious adverse events were reported," Dr. Sheffield said. "Initial concerns about the ability of a pregnant woman to mount an effective immune response to a vaccine are largely unfounded. It's doable."
###
Other UT Southwestern obstetrics and gynecology researchers involved in the study were Dr. George D. Wendel Jr., professor and senior author; Dr. Ashley Hickman, assistant professor; Drs. Jennifer Tang, Kristie Moss and Natalie M. Crawford, all former medical students; and Atoosa Kourosh, candidate for a master's degree in public health.
The study was funded by Warren H. Pearse/Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and the Women's Health Policy Research Award.
Visit http://www.utsouthwestern.org/obgyn to learn more about clinical services in gynecology and obstetrics at UT Southwestern.
This news release is available on our World Wide Web home page at
www.utsouthwestern.edu/home/news/index.html
To automatically receive news releases from UT Southwestern via email,
subscribe at www.utsouthwestern.edu/receivenews
Stepped-up vaccine series for hepatitis B is effective during pregnancy
2011-06-28
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
The good, the bad and the ugly: The many roles of c-JUN in cancer
2011-06-28
The c-JUN protein was initially described in the late 1980s as the mammalian equivalent of a protein responsible for causing cancer in birds. Intense research in a number of labs has subsequently led to a basic understanding of how the protein works. c-JUN is a transcription factor that modifies (phosphorylates) key regulatory proteins in the cell, thereby activating or deactivating them and leading to unregulated cell division and hence cancer. It has also become clear that c-JUN acts not on its own but in conjunction with an array of further proteins that modulate ...
Rockin' tortoises: A 150-year-old new species
2011-06-28
A team of researchers investigated a desert tortoise from the Southwest USA and northwestern Mexico. What was thought to be a simple problem in species identification turned out to be a very complex matter. Their investigations required forensic genetics and several other methods. In the end, they found it necessary to describe a new species. More than that, the discovery has very important implications for conservation and the development of the deserts of southern California.
Since the original description of Agassiz's Land Tortoise, scientifically called Gopherus agassizii, ...
Third-Party Consultants Garner Higher Client Satisfaction than Vendors by 20-Plus Percent
2011-06-28
Whether in a leading or supporting role, third-party firms specializing in a vendor's applications implement them more adeptly than the vendor itself for all but one vendor -- often by a wide margin, according to a new KLAS study.
For the report, Clinical Implementation Services: High in Demand But More Specialized in Need, healthcare providers reported contracting out implementation work to 30 different companies, from smaller boutique firms to the software vendors themselves. Every vendor, except for Epic, was outstripped by third-parties specializing in the vendors' ...
Florence & the Machine Play to Sold-Out Crowd at Greek Theatre
2011-06-28
At their largest US show to date, Florence & the Machine debuted new music to a sold-out Greek Theatre in Berkeley, CA (produced under the direction of Another Planet Entertainment). Playing under the stars to a capacity crowd, the band celebrated their debut album, Lungs (released 2009), with a 90-minute set that set the stage for a victory lap across America. The band reveled in the moment, clearly excited to deliver fresh material.
What Water Gave Me offered the audience insight into the band's creative process as they flesh out ideas for a new release. Highlighted ...
Lack of empathy following traumatic brain injury linked to reduced responsiveness to anger
2011-06-28
Milan, Italy, 28 June 2011 – Egocentric, self-centred, and insensitive to the needs of others: these social problems often arise in people with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and have been attributed in part to a loss of emotional empathy, the capacity to recognise and understand the emotions of other people. Given that traumatic brain injuries are becoming more common, and resulting empathy deficits can have negative repercussions on social functioning and quality of life, it is increasingly important to understand the processes that shape emotional empathy. A new ...
Biocides that attack only insects
2011-06-28
Biocides turn out to be less toxic for the environment if they are subjected to microencapsulation, due to the fact that this process forms shell(s) for the substance. This is the conclusion of chemist Ms Mariluz Alonso in a thesis defended at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). In this research, she chose a number of biocides and other complementary substances, seeking a micro-encapsulation which, besides being compatible with the environment, is more soluble in water, more manageable for the operator, with better conditions of conservation, and effective against ...
World record: The highest magnetic fields are created in Dresden
2011-06-28
On June 22, 2011, the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf set a new world record for magnetic fields with 91.4 teslas. To reach this record, Sergei Zherlitsyn and his colleagues at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory Dresden (HLD) developed a coil weighing about 200 kilograms in which electric current create the giant magnetic field – for a period of a few milliseconds. The coil survived the experiment unscathed.
"With this record, we're not really that interested in reaching top field values, but instead in using it for research in materials science," explains Joachim ...
Luxury Lingerie Retailer Journelle to Give Away a Year Supply of Designer Intimates
2011-06-28
Designer lingerie seller Journelle, Inc. has launched a Facebook contest that awards the winner with $1,200 worth of lingerie.
To be eligible to win Journelle's "Calendar Girl" sweepstakes and receive $100 worth of fine lingerie every month for a year, contestants must complete an entry form with her name, date of birth, e-mail address, telephone number, and click on Journelle's "Like" button on Facebook . Entrants must be 18 years of age or older.
The contest ends at midnight on July 4, 2011. Purchases from a Journelle store are not required for ...
New measurement important complement to GI
2011-06-28
"White pasta is one example of a product which in some cases has received a bad reputation because of a high GI. However, white pasta produces just as good a blood glucose response as wholewheat pasta", says Liza Rosén, doctor in applied nutrition at Lund University in Sweden.
The reason why wheat pasta has sometimes been assigned a confusingly high value is that GI only considers the entire area under the blood sugar curve. In contrast to what many believe, GI does not take fluctuations in blood sugar into account. This puts foods with a long and fairly low curve at ...
Model finds optimal fiber optic network connections 10,000 times more quickly
2011-06-28
Designing fiber optic networks involves finding the most efficient way to connect phones and computers that are in different places – a costly and time-consuming process. Now researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a model that can find optimal connections 10,000 times more quickly, using less computing power to solve the problem.
"Problems that used to take days to solve can now be solved in just a few seconds," says Dr. George Rouskas, computer science professor at NC State and author of a paper describing the new method. The model could solve ...