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October 14, 2002

INTERNATIONAL IMMUNIZATION NEWS

"Need for Mass Hepatitis A Vaccination of Indian Children Questioned" Reuters Health Information Services (www.reutershealth.com) (10/11/02); Vidyashankar, C.

According to Indian researchers, universal vaccination of children against hepatitis A may not be necessary, as Dr. Yogesh Batra and associates from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi note that most children develop natural antibodies by time they are 10 years old.  During their studies of 500 children between the ages of 10 and 17 years, Batra et al. detected antibodies in 486, or 97.2 percent, of the children overall.  The authors noted that while a decline in the anti-hepatitis A seroprevalence among children would likely result in an increase the incidence of the disease among adults, their study found that between 1992 and 2000, incidence rates at their hospital have remained static.  The researchers, who reported their findings in the September Bulletin of the World Health Organization, concluded that in hepatitis A-endemic countries where exposure is generally universal among children and the incidence of the disease among adults has remained static, it may be neither cost-effective or necessary to conduct mass immunization.

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