What is hepatitis B and why are newborns vaccinated against it?: SHOT - Health News:

For decades, infants in the United States have been vaccinated against hepatitis B. This may change. The CDC's vaccine advisory panel may vote to end routine vaccination.Here's what parents need to know.

Hepatitis B: What Parents Need to Know About the Virus and the Vaccine

For more than three decades, hepatitis B vaccination has been routine in the United States.That may change soon.

An advisory committee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to vote Thursday to overturn the general recommendation.

If this happens, pediatricians say, the health consequences can be severe.

"It would be very dangerous," said Dr. Andrew Pavia.He is a professor of pediatrics and medicine at the University of Utah and a specialist in infectious and adult infectious diseases.

Hepatitis B virus attacks the liver.The disease is incurable and chronic infection can lead to serious consequences such as liver cancer, cirrhosis and death.And the risks of these outcomes are much higher for those infected as babies.

"About 25% of children who develop chronic hepatitis B will die from their infection," says Fabia, who is also a spokeswoman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Delaying the birth rate by just two months could result in at least 1,400 treatment cases per year, according to a new analysis.Delaying vaccinations until the age of 12, as proposed by President Trump this year, could result in at least 2,700 infections a year.The study was released to peer review ahead of this week's Immunization Practice Committee meeting.

Before the United States began universal immunization of newborns in 1991, about 18,000 children under 10 were infected each year. About half were infected through mother-to-child transmission, Fabia said.Vaccination of newborns after birth can help prevent viral infections.

The other half of the children were infected elsewhere.President Trump said that there was no reason for babies to be vaccinated because hepatitis B is a sexually transmitted disease, which is one of the means of transmission.But Pavia says the risks for children are everywhere.

"Cases of infection in daily care. Cases of infection in sports teams from shared hegemonic months and from shared months," he said.

The virus is found in blood, saliva, semen and other body fluids, even tears, and can live on surfaces for up to seven days.Anita Patel, M.D., of Pediatrics and Pediatric Intensive Care in Washington, D.C., says a child with a wound who comes in contact with this surface -- even days later -- can become infected.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about half of the people who contract them have the virus, but Patel said they can still spread the virus unintentionally.

"If you have a blood transfusion, it can potentially get on a baby," Patel says."And if the baby has some kind of skin rash, like the baby, frankly, often - then they can get hepatitis B."

Dr. Su Wang says he suspects he contracted hepatitis B as a child through his grandparents.He says they were likely exposed through their work as medical workers in Taiwan.Taiwan had a very high rate of hepatitis B infection among adults before it started a successful national vaccination program in the 1980s.

“When I was born, they came to help me, like many other grandparents, and lived with us,” Wang said."They become the primary caregiver within the first month of life. And that's most likely how I got hepatitis B."

Wang is currently an internist and researcher specializing in hepatitis at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey.

He says it is very important to give the gun when he appears.Since the newborn vaccine became the norm in the US, the relative level among people 19 and younger has dropped to 99%.

"When we set out to make this universal for all children, you saw this blanket protect an entire generation of children," Wang says.