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An epidemiological study on the occurrence of hepatitis B virus markers in a part of the population of Kwangwon province
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In Ho Choo, Don Hee Han, Sung Joo Hwang, Chang Hong Min, Min Kee Cho, Chang Soon Yoon
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Korean J Epidemiol. 1986;8(2):314-322.
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 Abstract
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Abstract
The endemic city of hepatitis B virus infection in Asia is strongly correlated with the high incidence of liver cirrhosis and primary hepatocellular carcinoma. Prospective studies in Taiwan and Japan have estimated that the relative risk of HBV carriers developing liver cancer is over 200 times that of other persons.
Many serological surveys in the late 1970s and early 1980s carried out in Korea indicated a high prevalence of HBV seropositivicity with the variation of 2.0-12.0% for HBsAg and 33.0-87.8% for anti-HBS, which may be due to insensitive methods available at early days rather than the characteristics of the sample population. Today it is believed that about 10% Koreans are HBV carriers. The nationwide vaccination campaign is currently in implemention by the Health Administration. Most people are therefore aware of need for blood testing to know immune status.
Kwangwon Province, which strides on the 38th armistice parallel, has been indicated by some workers as one of geographical areas for high infection, which seems necessary to be confirmed with a more sensitive assay method Radioimmunoassy in order to provide rational estimates of vaccine requirement for the Provincial Health Administration.
The authers have carried out this serological study on a total of 575 individual sera with Radioimmunoassay for detection of HBsAg, anti-HBS, HBeAg and anti-HBC. Blood was collected from volunteers at eight county health centers (Chunchon, Chunsong, Hongchon, Inje, Hwachon, Cholwon, Yangu and Samchok) and also at the University Hospital at Chunchon, from March to November 1985.
A questionaire form was filled out for each individual by trained interviwers at the time of blood selection. The form was so designed as to include various partmeters affecting HBV infection for computer analysis of risk factors.
The findings are as follows：
1) The positive rates for HBV markets ranged 13.3% for HBsAg, 60.0% fir anti-HBS and 62.9% for anti-HBS, and as a result 75.7% of the test sera showed positive for any marker, single or combined, which demonstrates the current of past infection.
The positive rate of HBsAg is 2.2 times higher in males than females and other markers had no sex difference.
2) The frequency of HBeAg carrier was 3.8%. The co-occurrence of both HBsAg and anti-HBS together in the same serum was detected in 5.4%.
3) In risk factor analysis, only two variables-eating out and drinking habits were associated with HBV infection, other failed to yield statistical association.
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