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Did Hepatitis B Deaths Increase After the Hepatitis B Vaccine Was Introduced?

Vincent Iannelli, MD

Why do some people think that hepatitis B deaths increased after the hepatitis b vaccine were introduced?

These hepatitis B deaths are not in folks who were vaccinated. They are mostly in older people with chronic hepatitis B – which could have been prevented if they had been vaccinated when they were younger…

The usual suspects…

Did Hepatitis B Deaths Increase After the Hepatitis B Vaccine Was Introduced?

While it will take some time for hepatitis B cases and deaths to get under some control once the hepatitis B vaccines were introduced, there is a good reason that there wasn’t a big drop as we see with most vaccines.

“Approximately 25% of persons who become chronically infected during childhood and 15% of those who become chronically infected after childhood will die prematurely from cirrhosis or liver cancer.”

Pink Book – Hepatitis B

Those deaths are in people who were infected many years ago, long before the vaccine was available.

And a lot of people, up to 2.4 million in the United States alone, including many who do not even know that they have hepatitis B, are chronically infected!

The big progress seen when hepatitis B vaccines were first introduced has stalled recently, but the new universal hepatitis B vaccination recommendation will likely decrease new infections even further.

But if you really want to see the impact of the hepatitis B vaccines, you can just look at how the rates of acute hepatitis B infections have dropped over the years.

During these years, hepatitis B vaccines were only recommended for children and high risk adults.

You can also look at the rates of perinatal hepatitis B infections – those are newborn babies who get hepatitis from their infected mother.

“During 2022, a total of 13 cases of perinatal hepatitis B that met the classification criteria for a confirmed case were reported to CDC through the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS), compared with 17 perinatal hepatitis B cases reported during 2021.”

Hepatitis B Surveillance 2022

There were 13 cases of perinatal hepatitis B in 2022 as compared to the thousands of cases we saw in the pre-vaccination era!

Why is this important?

The younger you are when you have an acute case of hepatitis B, the more likely you are for it to turn in a chronic infection.

In fact, 90% of babies with a perinatal hepatitis B infection go on to develop chronic hepatitis B and many, about 25%, later die from cirrhosis or liver cancer.

The Real Impact of the Hepatitis B Vaccine

Instead of just 13 cases of perinatal hepatitis B each year, how many would we see if didn’t have a universal vaccination program for infants and children?

It is estimated that for babies born in 1998, for example, without our hepatitis B vaccination program, there would have been:

But instead of 6,800 perinatal hepatitis B infections a year, there were 13 in the last reported year!

We are also on track with goals to reduce new hepatitis B virus infections and are working to reduce the reported rate of hepatitis B related deaths.

So despite the propaganda from anti-vaccine influencers, it should be clear to everyone that hepatitis B vaccines work.

Was the Hepatitis B Vaccine Made with Human Blood?

What about the idea that the original hepatitis B vaccine was “made with human blood” that Aaron Siri posted?

The truth doesn’t sound quite as scary…

“The first vaccines against hepatitis B, known as plasma-derived vaccines, were developed in France and in the USA in the early 1980s by harvesting the 22 nm hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) particles taken from the blood of carriers of HBsAg, which were then inactivated and purified through treatments with a combination of urea, pepsin, formaldehyde, and heat.”

Hepatitis B Vaccination: A Historical Overview with a Focus on the Italian Achievements

Even if you still think that method sounds concerning, you don’t have to worry, as hepatitis B vaccines are now made with HBsAg that is made in yeast cells.

What should concern you?

Hepatitis B!

We still don’t have a cure for hepatitis B infections, so you are best off getting vaccinated and protected to be sure you never get infected, even if you think you don’t have any risk factors.

More on Hepatitis B Vaccines

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