Background: Hepatitis B and C virus (HBV & HCV) infection is on the surge among pregnant women as a result of unsaved dental and cosmetic procedures, reuse of needles, raising the risk of perinatal transmission and HBV & HCV infection in children. Although few studies on the prevalence of HBV and HCV infection during pregnancy have been conducted but the majority of the studies are on very low sample size. The current study is based on large data set. Objectives: The major goal of this study was to find out the frequency of HBV & HCV in pregnant women. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study in Alkhidmat Raazi Hospital Rawalpindi. A total of 31911 pregnant women who delivered between 2016 and 2021 were analyzed and categorized as HBV & HCV infected or HBV & HCV uninfected by billing codes. The birth certificate and hospital discharge records were used to identify infant records related to HBV and HCV-infected pregnant mothers. Pregnant women's plasma samples were tested for HBV and HCV using chemiluminescence ARCHITECT i1000SR® Abbott Diagnostics. Data were analyzed using packages within SPSS software and P ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. Cross-tabulation chi-square analysis was performed with a significance level of 5%. Results: The pregnant women with age under 25 years were 12699 (39.8%), women with age from 26 to 29 years were 9734 (30.5%), while women with age 30 and older were 9478 (29.7). The patients who were primigravida were 9514 (29.8%), multipara having 1-4 children 18545 (58.1%) and those having more than five children were 3852 (12.1%). The prevalence of HBV and HCV in 31911 pregnant women were 170/31911 (0.5%) and 478/31911 (1.5%), respectively. The mean age was 27.9 years. Conclusions: HBV and HCV infection is present in pregnant females, which may ultimately increase the treatment cost and vertical transmission. Keywords: Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Infection, Pregnant females

Type III von Willebrand disease is present in the Punjab province of Pakistan along with other inherited bleeding disorders like hemophilia. Cousin marriages are very common in Pakistan so genetic studies help to establish protocols for screening, especially at the antenatal level. Factors behind the phenotypic variation of the severity of bleeding in type III vWD are largely unknown. The study was conducted to determine Mutations/genetic alterations in type III von Willebrand disease and also to determine the association of different mutations, methylation status, ITGA2B/B3 mutations and alloimmunization with the severity of type III vWD. After informed consent and detailed history of the patients, routine tests and DNA extraction from blood, mutational analysis was performed by Next Generation Sequencing on Ion Torrent PGM. DNA methylation status was also checked with the help of PCR. In our cohort, 55 cases were detected with pathogenic mutations. A total of 27 different mutations were identified in 55 solved cases; 16 (59.2%) were novel. The mean bleeding score in truncating mutations and essential splice site mutations was relatively higher than weak and strong missense mutations. The mean bleeding score showed insignificant variation for different DNA methylation statuses of the VWF gene at the cg23551979 CpG site. Mutations in exons 7,10, 25, 28, 31, 43, and intron 41 splice site account for 75% of the mutations.