Hepatitis B Virus Antibody Levels in High-Risk Health Care Workers

Hepatitis b is one of the most prevalent infectious diseases in the world, with more than two billion people infected and more than 350 million chronic carriers (1-4). approximately five hundred thousand infected patients die annually (5). health care workers are also at high risk of contracting hepatitis b virus (hbv) through blood, and infected staff can transfer hbv to uninfected patients, which can further spread the infection into society (6). in addition to standard precautions, personnel who are sensitive and susceptible or infected should be identified and immunized to reduce the morbidity of health care workers (7). health care workers, particularly those working in emergency departments, are considered to be a high-risk group (8, 9). we conducted this descriptive, cross–sectional study to determine the hbv antibody titer and immunity levels of health care workers and 173 personnel working in an emergency department. we evaluated subjects’ hbs antibody titer with an elisa method. titer < 10 iu/l, titer ≥ 10 to 100 iu/l, and titer > 100 iu/l were considered to be inappropriate, protective, and good levels of immunity, respectively. with these cutoffs, 31 (17.19%), 72 (61.41%), and 60 (68.34%) of subjects had inadequate, protective, and good antibody titer levels, respectively.