Abstract

HEPATITIS B VIRUS SUBCLINICAL CASE INFECTION IN BASRA PATIENTS DISCOVERED BY PRE-OPERATION OF VIRAL SCREENING INVESTIGATIONS

Awatif H. Issa (Prof.Dr.)*, Noor Abd. Hamdan (MSc) and Hazim T. Thwiny (Ph.D)

Abstract

Hepatitis B is an inflammation of liver that is caused by hepatitis Bvirus (HBV), HBV infections can be asymptomatic, or can present asacute or chronic hepatitis that can then lead to primary heptacellularcarcinoma or liver cirrhosis. This disease considered as the majordisease of humaneness and a serious global public health issue.HBsAg, HBsAb, HBeAg, HBeAb and HBcAb are biomarkers used todetect the presence and the stage of the infection. The Iraqi ministry ofhealth applied pre-operation viral screening investigation, according tostatistics in the largest hospitals in Basra province: Al faihaa generalhospital, Alsadir teaching hospital, Ibin Ghazwan hospital, Basrageneral hospital, Public health laboratory. For the period from 2012 till 2014. Two thousandtwenty eight infections with HBV were 617, 697 and 714 patients, respectively. The currentstudy including 169 cooperated cases from them (91) males and (78) females. By ratio (1.14 :1). The mean age of patients for males (39.9) and for females (39.7) range from 5-75 years asfollows < 20 (11.83%), 21-30 (18.93%), 31-40 (25.44%), 41-50 (15.38%), 51-60 (15.38%)and > 61 (13.01%). The clinical state, viral load and their distribution according theirdifferent residential area in Basra province were performed. 169 patients were divided into 3studied groups including: Actually infected, active acute and chronic infections with rates(87.83%) (10.81%) (8.11%), respectively. Viral load have been classified according to thelevel of viral load with the maximum number of cases have got a viral load below 50,000IU/ml (about 37.8% of the cases). Where the infections distributed by districts and center city, founded that the highest prevalence in Al-Zubair district (13.01%) followed by Abu Al-kaseeb (10.65%) and Shatt al-Arab district (5.91%). As for the city center, the infection was scattered in all the province, but the highest prevalence was in Al-Basra Alkadema (24.26%), although there are difference in the infection rates, but the statical analysis showed that there is no great significant difference. We concluded that HBV infection remains a dangerous health problem because it's prevalence is still significant among patients in all age groups and in all residential area in Basra province, all viral markers is very important for the disease diagnosis, rt-PCR a precise tool for diagnosis of HBV infection in Iraq cause it is a very sensitive scientific technique that gave the exactly number of copies/ml in a closed system.

Keywords: diagnosis, Hepatitis B virus (HBV), Hepatitis, real time PCR .hepatitis B surface antigen, Basra.