Ghazala Jaffery, Waqar Hussain, Muhammad Saeed Anwer, Muhammad Tayyab, Sajid Maqbool, Naseer Ahmed Chaudhry.
Serodiagnosis of acute viral hepatitis (AVH) in children.
Pak Paed J Jan ;20(1):17-20.

Serum samples of 25 pediatric patients (< 12 years), presenting with clinical features of acute viral hepatitis (AVH) were tested for different seromarkers of AVH. They included anti-HAV (IgM antibody to hepatitis A virus), HBsAg (hepatitis B surface antigen), anti-HBc IgM (IgM antibody to hepatitis B core antigen), anti-HCV (antibody to hepatitis C Virus) and anti-HDV (antibody to hepatitis delta virus). Majority of the children (13=52.00%), suffering from AVH were positive for markers of acute hepatitis A (HAV IgM ). None of the patients were positive for markers of acute hepatitis B and hepatitis D infection. However 3 patients (12.00%) had hepatitis C infection. A total of 5(20.00%) children were HBsAg carriers. Two of these patients were positive for HBsAg alone, 1 had acute viral hepatitis A while 2 had additional hepatitis C infection. A large proportion of patients of AHV, (9=36.00%) did not reveal any seromarker of AVH and are likely to be cases of viral hepatitis E. Out of these 2(8.00%) were positive for HBsAg alone, while 7(28.00%) were negative for any of the seromarkers tested.

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