The Efficacy of Hepatitis B Vaccine in Iranian Population: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Introduction: Hepatitis B infection is an important health problem all over the world, and according to the studies, Iran is a country with intermediate prevalence, so vaccination is a cost-benefit approach. In this study, evidence about the efficacy of hepatitis B vaccine was collected by systematic review methods and its amount was estimated by a meta-analysis.

Materials And Methods: In this study, documents and literature search were performed using valid key words in Information Sciences Institute, PubMed, Scientific Information Data base, and Iranmedex databases from 1997 to 2010 in different regions of Iran. All cross-sectional studies about the efficacy of hepatitis B vaccine in Iran which fulfilled the inclusion criteria entered the study. Antibody titer (Anti-hemoglobins > 10 IU/L) was considered as the desired efficacy. In order to present the results, prevalence and Forest plot were used and for evaluation of the inconsistency meta-regression model and I(2) index were used. We used R.15.3.2 software for analysis.

Results: Totally 64 studies (52 studies in general population and 12 studies among specific populations) including 12,575 subjects with age range from 8 months to 55 years entered the meta-analysis. The efficacy was 86.3% (confidence interval [CI]: 83.9-88.7%) in the general population and 59.62% (CI: 47.9-71.29%) in specific patient populations. Also the efficacy was significantly related to the year of publication, age and gender (P < 0.05).

Conclusion: Prevention is an important issue in general health. Hepatitis B vaccination is one of the methods used to prevent hepatitis B infection. According to this study, the efficacy of hepatitis B vaccination was more than 80% in general population, so injection of full course of hepatitis B vaccinationis enough and booster dose is not required.