The prevalence of hepatitis C virus antibodies among the voluntary blood donors of New Delhi, India

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• 作者：A. Jain ; S.S. Rana ; P. Chakravarty ; R.K. Gupta ; N.S. Murthy ; M.C. Nath ; S. Gururaja ; N. Chaturvedi ; U. Verma and P. Kar
• 关键词：Anti ; HCV antibodies ; Hepatitis C seroepidemiology ; Hepatitis C virus ; Voluntary blood donors.
• 刊名：European Journal of Epidemiology
• 出版年：2003
• 出版时间：2003
• 年：2003
• 卷：18
• 期：7
• 页码：695-697
• 全文大小：63 KB
• 刊物类别：Medicine
• 刊物主题：Medicine & Public Health
  Epidemiology
  Public Health
  Infectious Diseases
  Cardiology
  Oncology
  
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-7284

文摘

Infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major cause of transfusion-associated hepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The present study was conducted with an objective to evaluate the prevalence of anti-HCV antibody in New Delhi, India using a large number of healthy voluntary blood donors. A total of 15,898 healthy voluntary blood donors were subjected to anti-HCV testing (using a commercially available third generation anti-HCV ELISA kit) and 249 were found to be reactive for anti-HCV antibody, yielding an overall prevalence of 1.57%. No significant difference was found between the HCV positivity rate of male (1.57%; 238/15,152) vs. female (1.47%; 11/746) donors, family (1.58%; 213/13,521) vs. altruistic (1.51%; 36/2377) donors and first-time (1.55%; 180/11,605) vs. repeat (1.61%; 69/4293) donors. The age distribution of anti-HCV reactivity showed a maximum prevalence rate of 1.8% in the age group of 20–29 years. In addition, there was a clear trend of decreasing positivity for anti-HCV with increasing age and this trend was statistically significant. The results of the present study show that the prevalence of anti-HCV antibodies in the healthy voluntary blood donors of New Delhi, India is considerably higher than the reported seroprevalence of HCV in majority of the industrialized nations and this represents a large reservoir of infection capable of inflicting significant disease burden on the society. In addition, donors of New Delhi, India showed a trend of decreasing seroprevalence with increasing age, possibly implying a higher exposure rate to HCV in younger subjects.