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Hep B Vaccine Doesn’t Work in Patients with Celiac Disease. 50% of Sufferers were Unresponsive to Vaccination
Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) phenotype DQ2 is considered the most important genetic marker for un-responsiveness to hepatitis B vaccine. Since celiac disease (CD) is also strongly associated with the same haplo-type it may be hypothesized that celiac patients are less able to respond to the vaccine. We report a retrospective study on celiac patients vaccinated with three doses of 10 μg at 3, 5 and 11 months of age by an intramuscular injection of a recombinant hepatitis B vaccine (Engerix B).

We found 30 of 60 celiac patients (50%) unresponsive to vaccination and a significant higher number of responders among patients younger than 18 months at the time of celiac disease diagnosis.

Our study confirms that celiac patients have a lower percentage of response to hepatitis B vaccination than healthy subjects.

Source: Vaccine,
Volume 27, Issue 43, 9 October 2009, Pages 6030-6033.

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