Most people who complete the hepatitis B vaccine series make a strong antibody response. A minority do not — an already-recognised clinical group, checked by a blood test rather than a genotype. A study of 6,867 Koreans found the strongest signals for who ends up in that group all sit in one gene, HLA-DPB1.
The hepatitis B vaccine works by teaching the immune system to make antibodies against a viral surface protein. The antibody level it produces — anti-HBs — is measurable, and most people who complete the vaccination series make plenty of it. A minority do not reach a protective level, and non-responder is already a recognised clinical category: checked with a blood test in anyone whose exposure risk makes it matter — healthcare workers, infants born to mothers with hepatitis B, people on dialysis — and addressed with revaccination or a higher-dose schedule where needed.
Chung et al. 2019 measured anti-HBs antibody levels in 6,867 healthy Koreans after vaccination and ran a genome-wide association scan against them. The result is unusually concentrated for this kind of study: the top 20 signals, by a wide statistical margin (P < 1.0 × 10⁻²⁹), all sat in one gene — HLA-DPB1.
The study went further and looked at specific alleles. The DPB1*04:02 allele was far more common among responders than non-responders (10.9% versus 1.0%), while DPB1*05:01 ran the other way, more common among non-responders (49.0% versus 31.1%). The variant this page tracks, rs9277356, sits alongside two others — rs1042169 and rs9277355 — that the paper reports travelling together with the DPB1*04:02 allele as an independent predictor of vaccine response.
HLA-DPB1 is part of the machinery that presents fragments of proteins — including viral ones — to the immune system, which is the first step in mounting an antibody response to anything, a vaccine included. Different HLA-DP variants present the hepatitis B surface antigen with different efficiency, which is a mechanistic reason a strong antibody response would cluster by genotype the way this study found it does.
Nothing here replaces the anti-HBs blood test. It is the direct measurement of what actually protects — antibody level — and it is already standard for anyone whose situation calls for knowing: healthcare workers with blood exposure risk, infants born to hepatitis B-positive mothers, people on dialysis or otherwise immunocompromised. A genotype at this locus is a statistical tilt toward being in the responder or non-responder group; the titre test says which group a given person is actually in.
If a titre test has already shown a low or absent response, the established next step is revaccination — sometimes with a higher-dose schedule — not a genetic explanation for why. This page describes why non-response clusters genetically; it is not a substitute for the retesting that already exists to catch it.
Chronic hepatitis B — the infection itself — has its own page. This page is about the vaccine that prevents it, and specifically about why the antibody response to that vaccine varies.
What a 23andMe/AncestryDNA export or raw VCF can and can't tell you about Response to Hepatitis B Vaccine comes down to these specific, well-studied positions — not a diagnosis.
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Response to Hepatitis B Vaccine. MyGeneLog™. https://www.mygenelog.com/conditions/hepatitis-b-vaccine-response
Not necessarily — this is one contributor among several to why antibody response varies, and the titre test is what actually matters clinically. It measures the antibody level directly rather than inferring it from genotype.
This is not used that way anywhere. The established practice is to vaccinate and then check anti-HBs titre in anyone whose situation calls for confirming protection, and to revaccinate if the response is low — a genotype does not change either step.
HLA-DPB1 is part of the machinery that presents protein fragments, including viral ones, to the immune system — the first step in making an antibody response to a vaccine. Different variants present the hepatitis B surface antigen with different efficiency, which is a plausible mechanism for exactly the clustering this study found.
Revaccination, sometimes with a higher-dose schedule, is the established next step, and it is a conversation for whoever ordered the titre test rather than something this page changes.
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