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PaperclipPerfector  14d ago (text post)   2906 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 23, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Hep B which they want to give children in the first hour post-birth despite no plausible method of transmission

Hep B can be transmitted from mother to child at birth, if not medically prevented.

How does post-exposure vaccination work? I can't wrap my head around it when the mother and child were sharing every bodily fluid possible for 9 months.

It's wild that it works, right?

I can't wrap my head around it when the mother and child were sharing every bodily fluid possible for 9 months.

Not quite - the whole point of the placenta is to share oxygen and nutrients without directly sharing blood, and apparently the Hep B virus generally doesn't make it through an undamaged placenta, or through an undamaged amniotic sac (which makes amniocentesis a risk for infected mothers), whereas some Hep B antibodies do make it through the placenta, and some accumulate in the placenta and may form a bit of a "barrier" there.

I'm not an expert in any of that, though, and it looks like part of the answer is "luck". Some viruses slip through the placenta much more easily than others, despite the obvious natural selection issues to the contrary.

That requires the mother to have it, which means if she doesn't, there's no plausible method of transmission.

Most mothers do not have it.

Yeah, we're down to 1000 mother-to-child transmissions a year in the US. The tradeoff here is between "a lot of babies get a vaccine they could have gotten later" vs "a few babies get a disease they can't get cured later".

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