Serological profile of HBV infection among apparently healthy hospital attendees

ABSTRACT

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection has been rated 10th among the killer diseases. Occult HBV infection goes undetected with the widely used HBsAg screening in most hospital thereby encouraging progression into complications such as liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. This work therefore aimed at evaluating HBV serological profiles among the population of apparently healthy hospital attendees and their proportion of susceptibility to HBV infection. 239 participants were recruited for this study. Their blood samples were screened for the HBV markers – HBsAg, anti-HBs, HBeAg, anti-HBe, and anti-HBc. In conclusion, this work depicted various serological patterns of HBV infection among apparently healthy hospital attendees suggesting there are occult HBV infection and immune escape mutant in our population. It also showed that a huge number of the study population were susceptible to HBV infection.

KEYWORDS:

• Serological profile
• HBV infection
• apparently healthy
• hospital attendees

Acknowledgments

The help of Mrs Blessing Adetunji in the course of writing the manuscript is greatly appreciated.

Authors’ contributions

ASO, DE, AL, AO designed the study. ASO collected the samples. All authors equally contributed for the acquisition of reagents and laboratory analysis. ASO and DE analyzed the data. ASO drafted the manuscript and DE revised. The final draft was completely read approved by all authors.

Conflict of interest

Authors affirm no conflict of interest.