Abstract

Hepatitis E (HE) is an inflammation of the liver caused by hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection. Iraq is one of the Asian countries with high incidence and prevalence of hepatitis. In this paper, HE prevalence will be determined in Al-Muthanna province /Iraq. Commercially available Micro-ELISA for marker of hepatitis E (HEV IgM, Foresight, USA) kit was used to test (270) patients for HEV IgM antibodies. Also (10) blood samples from normal healthy individuals were used as normal control in this study. Among the (270) analyzed serum samples, a total of (72) samples (26.66 %) were found to be positive for anti-HEV IgM antibodies, and all these patients were tested for confirmatory test at central public health laboratories (CPHL) in Baghdad province. These patients consist of (45) females and (27) males were all negative for routinely screened markers of Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C. The positive sera anti-HEV IgM also were tested for total serum bilirubin (TSB), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) colorimetrically. The age ranged between (4-74) years old. Highly significant differences (χ2 =10.271, p ≤ 0.01) appeared among age groups. This study showed that the HEV IgM is more common among younger age group ( 15-24), with a percentage of )41.67%(. And higher in females (63%) than in males (37%).

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The article was added to IASJ on 2015-08-01

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