"HBV unIversal vs Point-Of-Care-based Antiviral treatMent to Prevent Mother-to-child Transmission"

To achieve global elimination of hepatitis B virus (HBV), it is crucial to eliminate HBV mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) by ensuring high coverage of birth dose vaccine and expanding the adoption of peripartum antiviral prophylaxis (PAP) by tenofovir. Current international guidelines require hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg)-positive pregnant women to undergo viral load (VL) quantification to identify those at high risk (VL ≥200,000 IU/mL) who should receive PAP. However, VL testing remains inaccessible in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly in rural areas. Consequently, in the forthcoming guidelines, the WHO is going to issue a conditional recommendation for administering PAP to all HBsAg-positive women lacking access to VL testing. Although this universal strategy may appear promising for simplifying the diagnostic process, it may result in overtreating the majority of HBsAg-positive pregnant women, estimated at 85% in Africa and 70% in Asia, for whom birth dose vaccine is likely sufficient. Moreover, the real-world applicability of this strategy in LMICs has never been formally tested.

As an innovative alternative, the adoption of a rapid point-of-care test for hepatitis B core-related antigen (HBcrAg-RDT) is proposed to identify women eligible for PAP.This test requires only a drop of capillary blood, eliminating the need for electricity or centrifugation, and can provide a reliable result within 45 minutes. Compared to the universal strategy, HBcrAg-RDT strategy is expected to be less expensive and could prevent unnecessary tenofovir exposure for both women and their fetuses. Our aim is to establish the non-inferiority of the HBcrAg-RDT strategy, in comparison to the universal strategy, in terms of effectiveness, defined as the reduction in maternal VL at the time of childbirth, a main driver of the MTCT risk. This will be approached through a multidisciplinary framework integrating health economics, implementation science, and health policy analysis.