The Seroprevalence of Hepatitis B Virus Among Children Attending Urban and Rural Hospitals

Abstract

Objectives: This study was conducted to a) find out and compare the period prevalence of HBsAg in children attending outdoor and indoor of an urban and a rural hospital b) determine the risk factors for Hepatitis B surface antigen positivity. Materials and Methods: Three hundred and twenty three children were included in this study. Among them 162 attended an urban hospital and 161 attended a rural hospital. Collected sera were examined for HBsAg by ELISA method in a standard laboratory. Results: Among the 162 urban children 17 (10.5%) were found to be HBsAg positive and among the 161 rural children 6 (3.7%) were found to be HBsAg positive. This difference is statistically significant (P value < 0.05). In urban area, 12 (16.2%) school aged, 3 (6%) pre-school children and 2 (5.5%) infants were found to be HBsAg positive. In rural area, more pre-school (6%) than school children (2.8%) were found to be HBsAg positive. In urban area, 11.5% male children and 9.5% female children were found to be HBsAg positive and in rural area, 5.2% male and 2.8% female children were to be HBsAg positive. Among 17 HBsAg positive cases who attended urban hospital, 11 (19.6%) had past history of jaundice and 6 (5.6%) had no past history of Jaundice (P value < 0.05). Among those 17 HBsAg positive cases, 13 (14.6%) had past history of inoculation within last 6 months and 4 (5.5%) had no such history. This difference is also statistically significant (P value < 0.005). Conclusion: Prevalence of positive HBsAg marker is fairly high in urban children (10.5%). Prevalence of HBsAg has no age and sex prediction. More sero-positive children in urban area have previous history of jaundice and history of inoculation in last 6 months, but no one in rural area had history of jaundice or inoculation within last 6 months. Key word: Serosurvilance; Hepatitis B virus. N.B. This publication is based on a dissertation DOI: 10.3329/bjch.v30i1.6178 Bangladesh J Child Health 2006; VOL 30 (1/2/3): 17-21

Epidemiology of Hepatitis B Virus Infection in Bangladesh: Prevalence among General Population, Risk Groups and Genotype Distribution

“…What complicates this picture is children in the age group 5–15 consistently show a significantly higher prevalence than under 5 children. This conclusion is based on the findings from four different study populations, differing in region (urban vs. rural) and socioeconomic background [ 1 , 3 , 13 , 18 ]. Based on prevalence data alone, while the high mean prevalence among children <15 (5.6%) does indicate the possibility of significant vertical transmission, a closer look at children of different age groups makes this inference less clear-cut.…”

“…The bar heights are factors of the normalized sample sizes of each study. The sample sizes ranged from 130 [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ] to 43,312 [ 8 ]. Studies done on voluntary blood donors and pregnant women have not been included here, since they form a substantial enough group to merit their own discussion.…”

The prevalence of hepatitis B virus infection in Bangladesh: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…The included 15 studies with a total sample size of 60 496 reported the prevalence of hepatitis B in Bangladesh and the characteristics of all studies are presented in Table 1. All the included articles [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] were cross-sectional studies and conducted throughout the period ranging from 1995 to 2017. The smallest sample size was 130 [14] and the largest sample size was 43 213 [26].…”

Hepatitis B Surface Antigen Seroprevalence among Prevaccine and Vaccine Era Children in Bangladesh

“…The hepatitis B vaccine birth dose was not introduced into the childhood vaccination schedule; 71% of births in Bangladesh occurred at home in 2011, which is a logistic barrier to administering a timely birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine. 16 Although data on the burden of chronic HBV infection in Bangladesh are limited, previous small-scale studies evaluated the prevalence of HBsAg, a marker of chronic HBV infection, to be 3–7% among the general population 17 – 20 and 1.5–12% among children aged < 5 years. 17 , 18 , 20 …”