TAF therapy helps prevent mother to child transmission of HBV
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Tenofovir alafenamide fumarate prevented mother to child transmission of hepatitis B without any safety concerns, according to study results.
Calvin Q. Pan, MD, from the Center for Liver Disease at Beijing Ditan Hospital, and colleagues wrote that tenofovir alafenamide fumarate (TAF) therapy is recommended by international guidelines as a first-line treatment for chronic HBV, except in pregnant mothers due to a lack of efficacy and safety data.
“Our data could potentially provide preliminary evidence to support TAF therapy as one of the treatment options for pregnant women and contribute to the knowledge of selecting antiviral therapy with better safety outcomes,” they wrote.
Researchers enrolled into their retrospective study mothers with chronic e-antigen positive HBV who received TAF therapy. The study included data collection on mother-infant dyads up to postpartum weeks 24 to 28.
The primary outcome of the study was mother to child transmission rates and malformation rate among the infants. Investigators also explored maternal HBV DNA reduction at delivery, as well as maternal or infant adverse events during follow-up.
The study comprised 71 mothers (mean age 30.3 years) who started TAF therapy during the second or third trimester and gave birth to 73 babies. At delivery, 85.9% of mothers achieved HBV DNA levels lower than 200,000 international units per liter.
At age 24 to 28 weeks, all infants tested negative for HBV surface antigen and had undetectable levels of HBV DNA.
None of the children had congenital defects or malformations. Additionally, their body weight, height and head circumferences were comparable to national standards. There were no serious adverse events among either mothers or children.
“Further studies with prospective design and long-term follow-up are needed to verify the findings above,” Pan and colleagues wrote. “Our preliminary data suggests that TAF should be considered as one of the first-line treatments for preventing mother to child transmission in this special population.”
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