Hepatitis B and C virus in West-Central Turkey: seroprevalence in healthy individuals admitted to a university hospital for routine health checks.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: The aim was to determine the seroprevalence rates for hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus and the frequency of hepatitis B core antibody seropositivity alone in residents of a city in Turkey. The subjects visited the Family Medicine Outpatient Clinics of a university hospital in Afyon for routine health checks between January 2002 and January 2004.

METHODS

A single serum sample was collected from subjects examined. The sera were analyzed by ELISA for hepatitis B surface antigen, hepatitis B surface antibody, anti-HBcIgG and anti-hepatitis C virus. Samples that were HBsAg-positive were also screened for hepatitis B early antigen and antibody. Subjects who were positive for anti-HBcIgG alone were considered to have "isolated anti-HBcIgG positivity".

RESULTS

1320 persons weere screened the rates of positivity for HBsAg, anti- HBs, isolated anti-HBcIgG, and anti-hepatitis C virus were 6.6%, 27.2%, 6.1% and 2.2%, respectively. Eight percent of the 87 HBsAg-positive individuals were HBeAg-positive. Comparison of marker detection rates according to sex and age (younger than 50 years vs 50 years or older) revealed a significantly higher prevalence of HBsAg positivity in males than in females (p=0.02), and a significantly higher prevalence of anti-hepatitis C virus and anti-HBcIgG positivity in the older than in the younger group (p=0.001 and p=0.001, respectively).

CONCLUSION

According to our results, the rates of hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus seropositivities in our region are similar to those reported in recent studies from other parts of Turkey. But these results cannot be extrapolated to all residents of the Afyon area because a random sampling method was not used for statistical analysis. However, they provide a good reference for future studies because of the large number of cases investigated.