by DrKSSMDPhD | April 29, 2015 7:22 am
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To DR. KISS,
I am now a new full member and of pensionable age (65+). I was very interested in your article but it made me think back over my life, in as much as i cannot remember if i have ever had an HBV vaccination. I logically think that i must have had it at some stage but cannot remember. As i now live half my life in Australia and half my life in Thailand each year the possibility of coming into contact with HBV would seem to increase. So my question to you is should i go to a doctor and get the vaccination just to make sure.
Sincerely, Don Bright.
PS, I have studied the development of Stem Cell Research over the past 25 years with a burning interest. So another question to you here is, have you written any previous articles for this membership on the subject that i can refer to, or are you likely to write any in the future.
Thank you DR. KISS.
Hi Donald: welcome to Stock Gumshoe and thanks for writing in. You have an enviable life, spending it between two fabulous countries. I have often thought that if/when I retire, I might do so in northern Thailand.
What I would do as a physician in a case like yours would be to draw one vial of blood and assay it for HBV core Ab, HBV surface Ag, and HBV surface Ab. There are several possible outcomes here: if you are negative on all three, your body has never come across HBV and you need immunizing. (Caveat: sometimes with remote immunization, patients will promptly produce high titer surface Ab after the first of the three immunization shots, which are at t-naught, 1 month and at 6 months). If you have both core and surface Ab and no antigen, you have actually had HBV before and cleared it. If surface Ag is present, you have HBV now, in a chronic “active” way, and need treatment with daily tenofovir or entecavir. If you for certain have no antibody to HBV you should be immunized straightaway….a highly preventable cause of death.
My next column in almost finished and for the column following it, I will discuss in great depth a company that has a major stem cell thrust. We’ll talk about the fairly novel way it plans to use stem cells and why I think it is likely to succeed for them.