Regional Diversity of Hepatitis C Virus Prevalence: Seeking for Culture Specific Mode of Transmission
نویسنده
چکیده
Chronic hepatitis C infection is one of the main causes of chronic liver disease, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Although means of eradicating hepatitis C virus (HCV) are on their way, an effective HCV vaccine is yet to be discovered. Current strategies for preventing HCV are to be closely related to the understanding of regional epidemiology and possible mode of infection. South Korea is considered to be HCV low prevalent area reporting the general prevalence rate less than 1.5%. However, Kwon et al. reported that there are noticeable differences in HCV distribution among the regions and counties, highest being age-adjusted prevalence greater than 3.5% in a county of Busan, southwest coast of South Korea. Considering the approximated HCV prevalence in Korea being 0.12% to 0.13%, the prevalence of 3.5% is stunning. This alarming figure should raise a systematic investigation seeking the possible route of infection and an initiation of education program for the general population on HCV infection and prevention. The prevalence of HCV seems to vary according to the study population and design since large proportion of HCV infected population is asymptomatic. Kwon et al. made use of the National Health Insurance data which naturally included only those who sought the medical assistances and reported the prevalence that is much lower than that of the previous reports. The figure presented by Kwon et al. is closer to HCV RNA prevalence among Korean blood donors between February 2005 and December 2009 which reported the prevalence of 0.16%. On the other hands, anti-HCV prevalence among health checkup examinees are reported to be 0.78% to 1.29%. Prevalence approximated by anti-HCV positivity tends to be exaggerated
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عنوان ژورنال:
دوره 8 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2014