Title: Hepatitis b and delta co-infection: Prevalence and serological characteristics in India
Abstract:
Introduction: HBV infection is the tenth leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for between 580,000 and 1.2 million deaths per year and approximately 8% of all HBV carriers worldwide are co-infected with the virus hepatitis delta (HDV). In Africa, about a quarter of the 68 million chronic carriers of HBV are suspected of being co-infected with HDV. In India, some authors have described a high prevalence of HDV infection in previous years. The objective of this work has to assess the prevalence of HBV and HDV co-infection, the influence of co-infection on B viral load, the relationship between HBe seroconversion and HBV viral load and the influence of HBV/HDV co-infection on HBe seroconversion, as well as the study of other biological parameters. The prevalence of HBV/HDV co-infection is 38.30% in our series of 211 patients with HBsAg, the distribution by sex reports a male predominance with a sex ratio of 1.45. The average age was 36 years old. The average HBV viral load was 4.68 ± 1.31 log IU/ml (i.e. 478.64 IU/ml ± 20.41). 98.9% of patients have HBeAg (-) and 5.4% were HBeAg (+). The prevalence of HBV/HDV co-infection is high in our country, reaching 31.4% of HBsAg positive subjects. The average age was 38years, the sex ratio M/F is 1.44. The HBe status is strongly correlated with the amount of DNA levels of our patients while the HBV viral load was not significantly different in AC HDV positive patients compared to AC HDV negative patients.
