Mohammad Alam Mengal, Ferhat Abbas, Muhammad Amin Mengal, Mohammad Hanif, Mumtaz Ali, Ghulam Sarwar Pirkarni, Zafar Ahmad.
Seroprevalence of Hepatitis C Virus in General Population of Balochistan, Pakistan.
Pak J Med Health Sci Jan ;7(1):180-4.

Background: Hepatitis C virus is an important public health problem and major etiological agent of chronic liver disease all over the world. Chronic hepatitis C virus infection is indolent and asymptomatic disease in human can lead to liver cirrhosis, fibrosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Methods: A cross sectional study was designed comprising of 2800 serum samples of general population of Balochistan. The samples were tested for anti-HCV antibodies by enzyme linked immunoassay (ELISA) and for positive samples alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels were also evaluated. The results were statistically analyzed by using SPSS version 16.0. Chi-square, Fishers exact test was used to find the relationship between the various variables such as age group, gender and area. Results: Out of 2800 subjects 1872 (66.8%) male and 928 (32.2%) female were tested for anti-HCV antibodies. Among 2800 subjects 196 (7.0%) were found positive for anti-HCV antibodies. Association between anti-HCV antibodies for gender and area was also observed. There was no significant difference between genders by ELISA. Only anti-HCV antibodies with age group 41-50 years was significantly different at p-value (<0.05) by ELISA. The highest ALT (alanine aminotransferase) level mean value 77.3 IU/L was observed for the age group of 41-50 years. Conclusions: In this study, it was aimed to determine the prevalence of anti-HCV antibodies in general population of Balochistan, Pakistan and concluded that the prevalence of anti-HCV infection is 7% in the studied population. We suggest routine tests of anti- HCV antibodies by ELISA, which can help in reduction of HCV infection transmission.

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