Journal of Infectious Diseases
Volume 205 Issue 5 March 1, 2012
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/jid/current

EDITORIAL COMMENTARIES
Kathleen B. Schwarz
More Lessons From the Taiwanese Hepatitis B Virus Vaccine Program
J Infect Dis. (2012) 205(5): 702 doi:10.1093/infdis/jir854
(See the article by Su et al, on pages 757–762.)

Extract
In this issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, the Taiwan National Children’s Hospital group, under the capable leadership of Dr Mei-Hwei Chang, has once again used carefully constructed national surveillance data to teach us something about hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in young subjects who received neonatal HBV vaccine. As one would predict, the highest rates for acute HBV infection were in unvaccinated individuals. Also, as expected, rates of acute HBV infection were lower in vaccinated birth cohorts aged 15–24 years than in unvaccinated birth cohorts, demonstrating once again the efficacy of the universal newborn vaccination program. The biggest disappointment was that, due to …

Viruses
Wei-Ju Su, Cheng-Chung Liu, Ding-Ping Liu, Shu-Fong Chen, Ji-Jia Huang, Ta-Chien Chan, and Mei-Hwei Chang
Effect of Age on the Incidence of Acute Hepatitis B After 25 Years of a Universal Newborn Hepatitis B Immunization Program in Taiwan
J Infect Dis. (2012) 205(5): 757-762 doi:10.1093/infdis/jir852
Abstract