Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV)is a global health problem .Egypt reports the highest incidence in the world.
Aim: The objectives of this work were to detect the prevalence of asymptomatic HCV infection among a sample of non risky school aged egyptian children in comparison with other two high risk groups; thalasemia and chronic renal failure patients, and to identify some risk factors of this infection.
Methods: This comparative cross sectional study was conducted upon 3 groups of children in the school age; group (1) included 300 non risky children attending the outpatient clinic in Benha University Hospital, group (2) included 20 thalasemic patients on repeated blood transfusion and group (3) included further 20 patients with chronic renal failure on regular hemodialysis . All children were subjected to history taking, physical examination and laboratory investigations for HCV antibodies by 4th generation ELISA, for positive cases RT- PCR, complete blood count (CBC), and liver function tests(LFT) were done.
Results: Asymptomatic HCV seropositivity was detected in 4% of school aged children, the main risk factors for transmission in this group were blood transfusion, frequent intravenous injections, circumcision by non medical personel, surgical and dental procedures.The positive predictive value(PPV) of ELISA in this group was75% when confirmed by PCR. Seropositivity in thalasemia group was 55% . The PPV of ELISA in this group was 81.8% when confirmed by PCR.Seropositivity in renal failure group was 50% .The PPV of ELISA in this group was 100% when confirmed by PCR. Thalasemia patients and chronic renal failure patients share common risk factors of HCV transmission such as blood transfusion, frequent intravenous injections and prior hospitalization.
Conclusion: Our results revealed that asymptomatic HCV seropositivity in a sample of school aged children was detected in 4% among 300 screened non risky children, and a significantly high prevalence of HCV seropositivity in children with thalasemia and children with renal failure were reported. PCR should be done for all HCV seropositive cases to confirm the presence of viremia.
|
