[Hepatitis B vaccine and liver cancer].

Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) chronic infection contributes to a high risk of hepatocellular cancer (HCC) development. HBV is a strong cancer inducer, due to natural history of infection, virological characteristics and viral DNA integrations events in host genome. Prolonged infection and high viral loads, particularly frequent in patients infected in childhood, are risk factors of HCC development for patients with HBV chronic infection. A HBV vaccine, based on immunization against the surface protein HBs, showed a strong efficacy to prevent chronic HBV infection. The development of universal neonatal vaccination programmes contributed to the decrease of HBV chronic infection incidence in children of high endemic areas. Although HBs antibodies levels diminished years after vaccination, HBV neonatal vaccination programmes led to a lower incidence of chronic HBV infection among young adults. The decrease of HBV chronic infection incidence was associated to a reduction of HCC incidence in children and young adults from areas with a high prevalence of HBV infection.