Clinical Microbiology: Open Access

Retrospective epidemiological study of hepatitis C virus infection among the population of Saudi Arabia

4^th International Conference on Clinical Microbiology and Microbial Genomics

October 05-07, 2015 Philadelphia, USA

Mohammad Saleh Al Aboody and Mariappan Premanathan

Majmaah University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: Clin Microbiol

Abstract:

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is one of the major etiological agents for liver cirrhosis and liver cancer. Hepatitis C, an infection of high prevalence worldwide, is insidiously progressive.. According to World Health Organization, more than 185 million people worldwide are infected with hepatitis C virus and of these, about 0.35 million die every year. HCV screening is an obligatory procedure in Saudi Arabia for blood donors, pre-marriage screening, pre-operative cases, medical check-ups, predisposed cases of out-patient (OP) as well as in-patient (IP) care. For this epidemiological survey, cases from Government General Hospital at Zulfi, Majmaah, Hefer Al Batin were included. Data from 2009 to 2014 were analyzed. During 6 years of study period, totally 174504 blood serum samples were screened by ELISA, among 407(0.23%) cases were positive. Highest incidence was observed in IP cases (0.8%) and the lowest in medical checkup group (0.2%). OP cases were the second least group with 0.21% of positive cases. Pre-marriage screening is the second highest incidence group with 0.33% of positive cases. The voluntary blood donors were also considerably positive with 0.28% with 68 positive cases of 24490 screened. The retrospective study proved that the commendable population found to be positive for HCV while screening in predisposition IP cases, pre-marriage testing and blood donation. It suggests that the screening tests are to be increased and intensified as a mandatory test for all the cases who steps into medical laboratory.

Biography :

Mariappan Premanathan is currently an Associate Professor in the Bioscience Research Center, Department of Medical Laboratories, College of Science, Majmaah University, Zulfi, Kingdom of SaudiArabia.

Email: ma.premanathan@gmail.com