Hep B Vaccine and Rheumatoid Arthritis (Sally/Natasa/whoever)

December 31, 2008

Hi All,

You would think I had been on the Trill this morning with all this

rabbiting on like a budgie I am doing.... been meaning to ask did

anyone see that statement a few weeks ago by Bernadine Healey (I think

it was her). She was calling for greater vaccine research. In it she

said there was an association between Hep B Vaccine and Rheumatoid

arthritis. This is the first I have ever heard that being mentioned.

Does anyone know anymore about this. I tried rooting about a bit but

wondered if maybe our Natasa or Sally might know more. I'm not too good

at all that Pubmed/Medline stuff. Interested because s Hep B

titres aer high and she also has mishspen finger joints which we are

going to see the Rheumatologist about mid January.

Lotsa Luv

Caroline

xx

December 31, 2008

this is very interesting Caroline, seems the same immune genes that predispose to RA following this vaccine have been found in autism!!

there is lots more on pubmed but these two below are quite telling:

J Rheumatol. 1998 Sep;25(9):1687-93.Links

The development of rheumatoid arthritis after recombinant hepatitis B vaccination.

Pope JE, s A, Howson W, Bell DA. Department of Medicine, the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.

OBJECTIVE: Hepatitis B vaccination has been associated with reactive arthritis and rarely rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We defined the clinical, serologic, and immunogenetic background of patients developing RA, soon after recombinant hepatitis B vaccination. METHODS: The clinical, serologic, and HLA antigens of a cluster of firefighters who developed arthritis after prophylactic recombinant hepatitis B vaccination (5 subjects), as well as a second group of sporadic cases of arthritis (6 patients) after hepatitis B vaccination are described. RESULTS: Ten of 11 patients fulfilled revised American College of Rheumatology criteria for RA. All cases had persistent arthritis for more than 6 months; at 48 months followup 2 cases no longer had inflammatory arthritis. Nine patients required disease modifying antirheumatic drugs. Five subjects were HLA-DR4 positive. HLA class II genes expressing the RA shared motif were identified in 9/11 patients genotyped for HLA-DRbeta1 and DQbeta1 alleles (0401, 0101, or 0404). All the firefighters shared the HLA-DRbeta1 allele 0301 and the DQbeta1 allele 0201, with which it is in linkage disequilibrium. CONCLUSION: These polymorphic residues in the binding site of the MHC class II molecules of the affected patients appear capable of binding some peptide sequences of the recombinant vaccine peptides they received and may be responsible for hepatitis B vaccine triggering development of RA in these cases. Recombinant hepatitis B vaccine may trigger the development of RA in MHC class II genetically susceptible individuals. PMID: 9733447 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

J Neuroimmunol. 1996 Jul;67(2):97-102.

Strong association of the third hypervariable region of HLA-DR beta 1 with autism.

Warren RP, Odell JD, Warren WL, Burger RA, Maciulis A, s WW, AR. Center for Persons with Disabilities, Utah State University, Logan 84322, USA. medlab@...

We reported that the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) including the null allele of the C4B gene and the extended haplotype B44-C30-DR4 is associated with autism. We report now that the third hypervariable region (HVR-3) of certain DR beta 1 alleles have very strong association with autism. The HVR-3 of DR beta 1* 0401 or the shared HVR-3 alleles DR beta 1* 0404 and DR beta 1* 0404 and DR *0101, was expressed on extended haplotypes in 23 of 50 (46%) autistic subjects as compared to only 6 of 79 (7.5%) normal subjects. Another HVR-3 sequence, the DR beta 1* 0701 allele, was carried on extended haplotypes in 16 (32.0%) of the autistic subjects as compared to 8 (10.1%) of the normal subjects.

PMID: 8765331