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Lower Incidence of Elevated Umbilical Cord Serum IgE Concentration in Infants of Hepatitis B Carrier Mothers

Elevated umbilical cord serum IgE concentration has been shown to be a reliable predictor for later development of childhood allergy (1). The incidence appears to be influenced both by genetic and environmental factors (2, 3). We have in a previous study reported a higher incidence of elevated cord serum IgE concentration amongst Chinese infants in Hong Kong compared with Caucasian infants in Sweden (4). Since hepatitis B antigenaemia is prevalent in our locality affecting 7-15% of our pregnant mothers (5, 6), we were interested to determine whether maternal hepatitis B infection exerts an environmental influence on fetal IgE synthesis.