Seroprevalence of Hepatitis A in Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C in Isfahan Province

Objectives: patients with hepatitis c virus infection are at high riskof getting hepatitis a virus. hepatitis a virus is an important widespreadvirus that usually causes more severe medical consequences inpatients with chronic liver disease. the purpose of this study was toevaluate prevalence of hepatitis a virus antibody in patients withchronic hcv in isfahan province, iran.methods: a cross-sectional study was carried out on 117 patients withchronic hepatitis c virus from spring 2010 to spring 2011. subject’scharacteristics such as age, gender, education, genotype of hcv infectionand history of intravenous drug use were collected by questionnaireand studied. statistical analysis was done by spss software (version19.0. 2010, spss) using chi-square test, fisher exact tests andcochran-armitage trend test.results: the mean age of the subjects was 33.18 ± 10.97 years. theseroprevalence of hav was 94.9% in patients with chronic hcv. theprevalence of anti-hav increased nearly as age increased. but, therewas no statistically significant difference in hav positive rate accordingto the age groups (p = 0.242) and other patient’s characteristics.conclusions: according to the high hav immunity in our study andless severe form of hav infection, vaccination was not required inthese patients. however, hepatitis a vaccination program should beperformed in hav seronegative patients with hcv to produce anadequate immune response.