Salwa S. Shihab, Hayder Abdulhussein Al-Hmudi, Hayder S. Al-Edani and Kuther H. Mahdi
The liver disease caused by hepatitis B (HBV) and C viruses (HCV) has become an important cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with chronic renal insufficiency. Our study aimed to evaluate the seroprevalence and viral loading of HBV and HCV infections among patients at Basrah dialysis unit. A147 individuals, comprising 122 patients on maintenance hemodialysis attending to Basrah haemodialysis unit and 25 individual's staff members. Serological testing for HBsAg, IgM anti-HBc, Total anti-HBc and anti-HCV antibody were performed using ELISA kits, and then patients with positive samples were extracted of nucleic acid and viral loaded by using Real-Time PCR.Of 122 patients, HBV infections seroprevalence were 61(50%) positive, whereas HCV seroprevalence were 70(57.4%) anti-HCV negative and 52(42.6%) anti-HCV positive. HBV-DNA was detected in 38/61(62.29%) patients, all examined 61positive patients were divided in four groups included, acute infections (34.4%) ,chronic infections (26.3%) past infections (37.7%) and early infection (1.6 %). Seroprevalence of HCV RNA was detected in 32/52 (61.53%) patients, all examined 52 anti-HCV positive patients were divided into three groups, 26(50%) patients > 2 ×106 copies/ml, 6(11.5%) patients < 2 ×106 copies/ml and 20(38.5%) patient's undetectable HCV RNA. we concluded that HD program patients were in high percentage infected with HBV and HCV.
