Seroprevalence of hepatitis C antibodies in healthy blood donors--a prospective study.

ABSTRACT

In the last decade, hepatitis C has emerged from obscurity as a disease (Non A Non B Hepatitis)familiar to only a few experts, to being recognized as a major public health problem. The present study was done to find out the seroprevalence of hepatitis C virus in 5000 blood donors in Patiala and to compare its seroprevalence in voluntary and replacement blood donors. The testing for HCV antibodies was done by ELISA technique using third generation HCV microlisa kit. Seroprevalence of anti-HCV amongst 5000 healthy blood donors was 0.88%. It was 0.58% in voluntary blood donors and 0.95% in replacement blood donors. Anti-HCV positivity was significantly higher amongst males (0.97%) than females (0.59%). Maximum anti-HCV positivity was seen in 41-50 year age group in voluntary donors and 31-40 year age group in replacement group. This study made us to conclude that above results were due to multiple reasons like transfusion of blood and blood products from unscreened donors, medical injections, tattooing, intravenous drug abuse, traditional medicinal practices, sexual promiscuity and lack ofawareness in rural population about the disease and mode of spread.