Virology

Rheumatoid arthritis

Immunology

Hepatitis B

Arthritis

Vaccination

Hepatitis

Medicine

Human leukocyte antigen

Inflammatory arthritis

Internal medicine

Antigen

PubMed

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.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.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-...

The development of rheumatoid arthritis after recombinant hepatitis B vaccination.