Patterns of Hepatitis B Virus Infection Serologic Markers among Blood Donors at a Tertiary .........

The purpose of this research was to determine the patterns of hepatitis B virus infection serologic indicators among blood donors at a tertiary healthcare facility in Central Nigeria.

The research was conducted in a cross-sectional manner.

The study took place in Keffi, Nasarawa State, from January to October of 2018.

Methodology: At the Federal Medical Centre in Keffi, Nasarawa State, a blood sample (3 mL) was taken from each of the 400 willing blood donors, and their socio-demographic information was gathered using structured questionnaires. The HBV-5 fast panel test kit was used to screen the sera for HBV infection serologic markers (HBsAg, HBsAb, HBeAg, HBeAb, and HBcAb) (CTK Biotech. Inc. San Diego, USA). Smith's Statistical Package (version 2.8, California, USA) was used to analyse the data, and a P value of 0.05 was judged statistically significant.

The majority of the 400 blood donors examined were men (391/400) and between the ages of 25 and 34 (203/400). 31.8% tested positive for HBsAg, 113.8% tested positive for HBsAb, 11.8% tested positive for HBeAg, 18.5% tested positive for HBeAb, and 78.5% tested positive for HBcAb. According to the results of these sero-marker analyses, 1.5 percent of the donors had chronic infection with high viral replication, 1.2 percent had acute infection with high viral replication, 4.5 percent were carriers with low viral replication, 0.7 percent had occult infection, 0.5 percent had recently been vaccinated, 15.5 percent were immuned due to successful vaccination, and 12.8 percent were immuned due to unsuccessful vaccination. In this study, age and gender had no effect on HBV infection (P > 0.05). However, there was a statistically significant variation in HBcAb rate between age and gender (P 0.05).

Conclusion: In the research area, we confirmed the presence of occult HBV infection among potential blood donors. To avoid transfusion-associated hepatitis B virus infection, HBV profiling for routine screening of blood donors should be made mandatory.

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