Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may recommend most children not receive a birth dose of the vaccine.
The committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may advise the agency to change the current recommendation that all infants receive a dose of the hepatitis B vaccine shortly after birth, according to a document released on Sept. 18.
Advisers at the end of a 7.5 hour meeting on Thursday will vote on whether the childhood immunization schedule should be updated to state that for children born to mothers who test negative for the illness, the vaccine “is not given until the child is at least one month old,” the document shows.
It had been known that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices would vote on hepatitis B vaccination, but the language of the vote had not been disclosed.
Hepatitis B is a liver disease for which there is no cure, although drugs can help manage infections. Hepatitis B can spread in multiple ways, including from pregnant women to their babies.
The CDC currently recommends that infants with normal birth weight receive the first dose of the three-shot hepatitis B vaccine regimen within 24 hours of birth.
That recommendation was implemented in 1991 due to “the difficulty of vaccinating high-risk adults,” according to the CDC. The rate of reported hepatitis B among individuals aged no older than 19 has since dropped from 3 cases per 100,000 to less than 0.1 cases per 100,000.
Some doctors have recently voiced concerns about the current hepatitis B vaccine schedule, including Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary.
“I personally don’t believe that the evidence is solid to say the hep B shot needs to be given at birth,” Makary said in a recent interview on Fox News.
The doctors say that infants born to women who tested negative during pregnancy do not need the vaccine until later in childhood.
Most European countries do not recommend hepatitis B vaccination at birth unless the mother has hepatitis B. Some don’t recommend it at all for children.
Other experts favor keeping the current schedule in place.
