Blumberg's vaccine cut child hepatitis B in China to 1%

Person: Baruch Blumberg
Lived: 1925–2011
Field: Medicine
From: American

The story

Hepatitis B spreads through blood and from mother to baby at birth, and infants infected early are especially likely to carry the virus for life. According to the World Health Organization, infection in infancy and early childhood leads to chronic hepatitis in about 95 percent of cases, compared with fewer than 5 percent when it is acquired in adulthood. In parts of Asia, including China, the virus was once extremely common, and chronic infection there was a major cause of cirrhosis and liver cancer.

Blumberg understood early how much was at stake in China. In the mid-1970s he read reports that liver cancer was one of the most common cancers in the world's most populous country, and his own studies had found high rates of the hepatitis B antigen among Asians. Soon after his 1976 Nobel Prize, the Chinese Medical Association invited him to visit, at a time when the United States and China did not yet have full diplomatic relations. In 1977 he lectured to thousands of Chinese scientists, explained how to test donated blood, gave them a copy of the vaccine patent, and put them in touch with Merck, which later shared technical information that allowed China to make the vaccine itself.

Research by Blumberg's group in Senegal also showed that babies of carrier mothers could be protected if vaccinated at or soon after birth, and the vaccine proved effective in newborns in Asia too. That made mass infant vaccination possible.

When China deployed hepatitis B vaccination, the infection rate among children fell from about 15 percent to about 1 percent in ten years. Blumberg himself cited a Chinese study in which the share of carriers fell from 16.3 percent before vaccination to 1.4 percent. In Taiwan, the incidence of liver cancer fell by two thirds after a decade of vaccination.

Because chronic hepatitis B causes so many liver cancers, each infection prevented in childhood is a cancer that may never develop decades later. The WHO now recommends a dose for every baby within 24 hours of birth, and the share of young children chronically infected worldwide has fallen below 1 percent. Jonathan Chernoff, scientific director of Fox Chase Cancer Center, said it was fair to say Blumberg prevented more cancer deaths than anyone who has ever lived.

Why it matters

Children vaccinated against hepatitis B are spared a lifelong infection that would otherwise threaten their livers and their lives.

About Baruch Blumberg

Physician and geneticist who discovered the hepatitis B virus, co-invented its blood test and vaccine, and shared the 1976 Nobel Prize, work credited with preventing millions of liver cancers.

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Baruch Blumberg

1925–2011 · Medicine

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