Without having to contact my doctor or the county or whoever, is there anyway to know if i was vaccinated for HBV?
I was born in rural North Dakota in 1990, i looked and it seems the vaccine was available in 1985 but not required until 1994.
I got all of my shots at the court house between birth and 5. Then in 7th grade i moved to Wisconsin and remember another round of shots, but i don’t remember what for.
Can anyone dig up an immunization schedule for Pembina County, ND in 1990? I can’t seem to.
I don’t think it was given to people except those at high risk. I got it in 1990 or 91 and had to ask since I didn’t fall into that category. I don’t see the point in giving it to a small child.
Anyway, you might remember it since it requires 3 injections, the last of which I believe has to be 6 months after the second. Don’t remember the interval between the first and second.
If you donate blood, they will test for HBV antibodies. So if you can get a copy of your tests from the Red Cross, that should tell you right away - unless they are now somehow able to test directly for the virus without doing a PCR.
Most places just test for Hep B core antibody, which will only be positive if one had an actual Hep B infection at some time in the past. Hep B vaccine induces Hep B surface antibodies, so the pattern one would see for someone who had the vaccine ought to be core antibody negative, Surface antibody positive. Whereas if a person had Hep B infection and cleared it, they’d have both core and surface antibody positive results.
Our state lab (Wisconsin) will reflexively test for Surface antibody and antigen, along with Hep B IgM if the core antibody comes back positive, but other places may not follow this pattern.
I was told that it was unnecessary unless you were at high risk. That’s basically code for promiscuously gay, IV drug user, health care worker and a few other situations.
Also, at the time, routine blood screenings weren’t sophisticated enough to discriminate between someone who had been vaccinated and someone who had been infected. That’s why I appreciated seeing Qadgop’s post about the tests for core and surface proteins. I had heard many years ago that they could discriminate, but I never found out how (thanks Q).
This may not have been something that was understood at the time that I got it. IDK. Either that, or they didn’t think I was likely to get it or become a carrier.
That’s true, but with a newborn, you are pretty much visiting the doctor on that schedule anyway. One more shot in the battalion she was getting, seemed pretty irrelevant.
I don’t know from kids let alone newborns, but ok. It seems odd that the kid is always sick or otherwise in need of medical attention, but maybe that’s just considered good parenting these days. No idea.
I’m just trying to imagine why they weren’t pimping the vaccine to everybody with disposable income from the day it came out. You know the official line they gave me. I never had a reason to question it, but who knows.
The first Hep B vaccine available in the United States, in 1981 or 1982, was made from HB surface antigen extracted from the blood of HB surface antigen-positive donors. Although it was safe, it made people nervous because many of these donors had risk factors for HIV infection. The vaccine was also very expensive. As a result, the vaccine was initially recommended only for people at fairly high risk of HBV infection such as injection drug users, people with many sex partners, persons with occupational exposure to human blood, and infants born to HB-positive mothers.
Later, when a recombinant vaccine (made by yeast cells) became available, the vaccine was more widely used but its uptake by groups at risk was always low. Meanwhile, Asian countries with high HB burdens with a lot of transmission of HBV from mother to child at birth were implementing HB elimination programs.
Eventually, a proposal was made that all newborns in the United States be routinely immunized against HB at birth as part of a national strategy to eliminate HB. This proposal was adopted by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Because immunizations recommended by DHHS are covered by the Vaccines for Children program and are normally covered by health insurance, vaccination of infants became routine.
HB is not the easiest disease to track because many cases go undiagnosed, but the CDC has tried to count acute cases since at least 1978. The data show a peak of about 12 cases per 100,000 population in about 1985 decreasing to about 2 cases per 100,000 population in 2008.
For the first year, our doctor wanted a 1 week, 1 month, 3 month, 6 month and 1 year visit just because. I don’t know if that is standard, but it seemed pretty ordinary to us.
Also, since the insurance covered it all, it had nothing to do with expendable income. I agree, that would be outrageous for the uninsured.