Evaluation of the response to vaccination with hepatitis B vaccine in pediatric patients diagnosed with celiac disease

BACKGROUND: A gap exists in the literature on celiac disease populations and the response to hepatitis B vaccination. OBJECTIVE: To identify pediatric patients with celiac disease who received the primary hepatitis B vaccination and investigate their response to vaccine. DESIGN/METHODS: Patients underwent blood draw for hepatitis B surface antibody titers. Patients with undetectable or non-protective HBsAb titers were contacted. Study outcome measures and patient characteristics variables were summarized by means, standard deviations, medians, and ranges. A two-sample t-test was used to compare normally distributed continuous variables between responders and non-responders. RESULTS: In all, 58% of patients did not meet the threshold for “protective” antibody titers. The mean time between completion of hepatitis B vaccination and diagnosis of celiac disease was 8.1 years for responders versus 10.5 years for non-responders. In a multivariate analysis, time between completion of vaccine and diagnosis of celiac disease was statistically significant predictor of response with an adjusted odds ratio of 0.69 (95% confidence interval: 0.50–0.95; p = 0.021). CONCLUSION: Our celiac disease population shows a high hepatitis B vaccine failure. The time between completion of vaccine series and diagnosis of celiac disease is an independent predictor for response.