Prevalence of antibody to human parvovirus B19 in pre-school age/young adult individuals in Shiraz, Iran.

The present study was conducted to determine the prevalence of antibody against the human parvovirus B19 among 5-25 year old individuals in Shiraz, southern Iran. Serum samples from 908 individuals (505 female and 403 male) were studied. The patients were categorized into seven age groups. The IgG anti-parvovirus B19 was determined by the commercial ELISA kit. Anti-parvovirus B19 IgG was found in 70.09% of the females and 60.04% of the males in this study. In general, 65.63% of the study population had IgG against parvovirus B19. Results from this study have show that the prevalence of parvovirus infection is found to be higher in females than males and in the majority of cases, infection with parvovirus occurs in the pre-school age period. These findings may differ from what is found other countries.