[Mother-to-child transmission of hepatitis B virus despite postexposure prophylaxis: A review of the literature and description of 11 observations]. / Échec de la séroprophylaxie contre le virus de l'hépatite B. Analyse de la littérature et mise au point à partir d'une série de 11 cas de contamination périnatale.

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection leads to a risk of developing cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. In France, where the prevalence of HBV is low, mother-to-child transmission is the cause of chronic infection in more than one-third of cases. After exposure, the risk of chronic infection is the highest for newborns (90 %). The World Health Organization implemented a global immunization program in 1991, applied in France in 1994. A significant number of children are infected each year, however, and failure of postexposure prophylaxis is reported in 4-10 % of newborns. We report 11 children with chronic HBV infection due to failure of serovaccination, followed up in two centers between 1993 and 2015. We discuss maternal screening, serovaccination, and follow-up conditions, as well as the role of maternal viral load, amniocentesis, and mode of delivery as risk factors. These observations confirm that serovaccination failures are related to the nonobservance of recommendations for maternal screening or postexposure prophylaxis, and to a high maternal viral load (>106 copies/mL). We therefore recommend improving the screening strategy, with control of the hepatitis B antigen in early pregnancy, and discussion of treatment with a nucleoside analog during the last trimester of pregnancy. Serovaccination should be enforced. Its efficacy should be controlled when the child reaches 9 months of age, in order to organize the follow-up if infection occurs.

Paediatric liver transplanted patients and prevalence of hepatitis E virus.

BACKGROUND: Hepatitis E is an emerging disease in developed countries and is usually asymptomatic, particularly in children. Chronic infection is possible in immunocompromised individuals. In the context of a liver transplant, it can simulate a rejection. In this case, antiviral therapy may be considered, thus highlighting the need to diagnose hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection in this population. OBJECTIVES: Given the lack of data in France, we have studied the the prevalence of antibodies to HEV in the paediatric liver transplant population. STUDY DESIGN: This was a retrospective study, carried out in Lyon between 1st January 2010 and 31 May 2013. HEV serology (anti-HEV IgM &IgG) and HEV PCR were studied in 96 children who had undergone liver transplants (84 isolated liver and 12 combined liver and kidney transplants). RESULTS: Eight patients (8.3%; 62.5% girls; mean age:12.3 years) were HEV seropositive. The mean period since their transplantation was 10 years (range:2-21.8 years). Biliary atresia was the principal indication for transplantation. Seven of these eight children had received liver transplants. There were no differences between the epidemiological and clinical data concerning these patients and the remainder of the study population, particularly with respect to immunosuppression(7/8 tacrolimus; 50% dual immunosuppression). No cases of chronic hepatitis E were found, but 1/8 had chronic cytolysis(EBV&adenovirus infection). In all the patients tested(4/8), seroconversion had occurred after the transplant. There was no significant differences between the age groups in this study. CONCLUSIONS: This study showed that in France, the prevalence of antibodies to HEV in paediatric liver and combined liver and kidney transplant patients is 8.3%, as has been found by other European authors.

Parietal damage dissociates saccade planning from presaccadic perceptual facilitation.

A well-known theory in the field of attention today is the premotor theory of attention which suggests that the mechanisms involved in eye movements are the same as those for spatial attention shifts. We tested a parietal damaged patient with unilateral optic ataxia and 4 controls on a dual saccade/attentional task and show a dissociation between saccadic eye movements and presaccadic perceptual enhancement at the saccade goal. Remarkably, though the patient was able to make the appropriate saccades to the left, impaired visual field (undistinguishable from saccades to his right, intact visual field), he was unable to discriminate the letter at the saccade goal (whereas his performance was like controls for letter discrimination in his right visual field). This suggests that saccade planning and presaccadic perceptual facilitation are separable--planning a saccade to a location does not necessitate that the processing of this location is enhanced. Based on these results, we suggest that the parietal cortex is necessary for the coupling between saccade planning and presaccadic perceptual facilitation.