Hepatitis B virus infection and liver disease in ethiopian immigrants to Israel

✍ Scribed by Edna Ben-Porath; Lea Hornstein; Jerome Zeldis; Jacob Nahmias; Mignon Gruia; Batia Bilgoray; Yehudit Satinger

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 529 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0270-9139
• DOI: 10.1002/hep.1840060420

✦ Synopsis

We assessed infection with hepatitis B virus in

357 Ethiopians who immigrated to Israel. Hepatitis B virus infection, as measured by the presence in the serum of HBsAg, anti-HBs, or anti-HBc, started at an early age (35% at the age of 1 to 4 years) and reached an overall rate of 98% in individuals over 40 years old. A high rate of HBsAg antigenemia in the young age group (19% at the age of 1 to 8 years) was associated with HBeAg and serum hepatitis B virus DNA. However, hepatitis B virus DNA was rarely detected in HBsAg-positive serum of older individuals who were anti-HBe-positive. No hepatitis B virus DNA sequences were detected in the serum of individuals who had anti-HBs. Despite the extremely high rate of hepatitis B virus infection that occurred at an early age, no clinical evidence of chronic liver disease in this population was detected.

Infection with the hepatitis B virus (HBV) is of global distribution, and over 200 million people are persistent carriers of the virus (1). HBV infection is an established cause of chronic liver diseases, including chronic active hepatitis and cirrhosis (2)(3)(4)(5)(6). Epidemiologic data indicate a close relationship between chronic infection with HBV and primary hepatocellular carcinoma (2, 7-9), which is among the most common cancers in Southeast Asia and Africa (7, 9-11). There are considerable differences in the patterns of HBV infection in different geographical areas, varying from low frequency of carriers (0.1 to 1%)