Patterns of Hepatitis B Virus Infection Serologic Markers among Blood Donors at a Tertiary Healthcare Facility in Central Nigeria

Aims: This study was conducted to evaluate the patterns of hepatitis B virus infection serologic markers among blood donors at a tertiary healthcare Facility in Central Nigeria

Study Design: The study was a cross sectional study.

Place and Duration of Study: Keffi, Nasarawa State, between January and October, 2018.

Methodology: Blood sample (3 ml) was collected from each of the 400 consenting blood donors at Federal Medical Centre, Keffi, Nasarawa State and their socio-demographic information obtained using structured questionnaires. The sera were screened for HBV infection serologic markers (HBsAg, HBsAb, HBeAg, HBeAb and HBcAb) using HBV-5 rapid panel test kit (CTK Biotech. Inc. San Diego, USA). Data collected were analysed using Smith’s Statistical Package (version 2.8, California, USA) and P value of ≤ 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results: Majority of the 400 blood donors screened were males (391/400) and aged 25-34 years (203/400). Of these, 31(7.8%) were positive for HBsAg, 113(28.3%) for HBsAb, 11(2.8%) for HBeAg, 18(4.5%) for HBeAb and 78(19.5%) for HBcAb. Analysi;s of these sero-markers indicated that 1.5% of the donors had chronic infection with high viral replication, 1.2% had acute infection with high viral replication, 4.5% were carriers with low viral replication, 0.7% had occult infection, 0.5% were recently vaccinated, 15.5% were immuned due to successful vaccination, 12.8% were immuned as a result of natural previous exposure to the virus while 63.3% were not exposed to the virus. Age and gender were not associated with HBV infection in this study (P > 0.05). However there was statistically significant difference between age and gender with rate of HBcAb (P < 0.05).

Conclusion: We confirmed the presence occult HBV infection among prospective blood donors in the study area. Hence, HBV profiling for routine screening of blood donors should be made mandatory to avoid transfusion-associated hepatitis B virus infection.