Seroprevalence of Hepatitis E among Iranian Renal Transplant Recipients

Background: renal transplant recipients are known to be susceptible to viral infections, with more severe clinical presentations compared to healthy persons. hepatitis e is generally a self-limited disease, which is caused by hepatitis e virus. recently, hepatitis e has become more important in organ transplant recipients, because of new findings regarding the potential for chronic infections in this patient group.objectives: this study aimed to evaluate the seroprevalence of anti-hev igg among kidney transplant recipients in urmia, in the north-western region of iran.patients and methods: 91 patients were selected randomly from amongst patients who had undergone kidney transplantation in urmia, iran. each patient was tested for the presence of anti-hev igg antibody using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (elisa, dia.pro; diagnostic bioprobes, italy).results: 28 subjects (30.8%) were seropositive for anti-hev igg. seropositive patients were generally older than seronegative patients (p = 0.009). there was no correlation between hev infection and the level of education (p = 0.206), the history of blood transfusion (p = 0.164), or history of pre-transplantation hemodialysis (p = 0.228). there was no significant difference in the serum alanine aminotransferase (alt) levels of the anti-hev seropositive and seronegative patients. multinomial logistic regression analysis indicated no significant relationship between hev infection and increase in alt levels, even after controlling for treatment with azathioprine (p = 0.79, or = 1.12; 95% ci: 0.45-2.76).conclusion: the anti-hev igg antibody has a high prevalence in iranian kidney transplant recipients, and it is significantly higher in comparison with previous studies in the general population or in hemodialysis patients.