Updated Seroprevalence of Hepatitis B Surface Antigen and Anti-Hepatitis Core Antibody Among Blood Donors in Yemen

Tawfique K A Alzubiery; Talal Alhazari; Jerold C Alcantara; Saleh A Majed; Abdulrahman S Bazaid; Abdu Aldarhami

doi:10.2147/IDR.S357819

Updated Seroprevalence of Hepatitis B Surface Antigen and Anti-Hepatitis Core Antibody Among Blood Donors in Yemen

Infect Drug Resist. 2022 May 31:15:2787-2796. doi: 10.2147/IDR.S357819. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Tawfique K A Alzubiery¹, Talal Alhazari^{2

3}, Jerold C Alcantara², Saleh A Majed⁴, Abdulrahman S Bazaid², Abdu Aldarhami⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medical Laboratory, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Taiz University Al-Turbah Branch, Taiz, Yemen.
² Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, College of Applied Medical Sciences, University of Hail, Hail, Saudi Arabia.
³ Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Taiz University, Taiz, Yemen.
⁴ National Blood Transfusion and Research Center, Sana'a, Yemen.
⁵ Department of Medical Microbiology, Qunfudah Faculty of Medicine, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

Purpose: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is one of the most common infectious pathogens worldwide. Various studies found a prevalence of HBV infection among blood donors ranging from 2% to 18%. Hence, this study aimed to provide an updated prevalence of HBsAg and anti-HBcAb among blood donors.

Patients and methods: This was a cross-sectional study to investigate the donation records of blood donors in Sana'a, Yemen, over one year (January to December 2019). Eligible blood donors were included in the study. The serum samples of blood donors were tested for HBsAg and anti-HBcAb (IgG & IgM) using the electrochemiluminescence (ECL) and enzyme immunoassay (EIA) techniques.

Results: A total of 16,367 blood donors were recruited in this study, of whom 14,300 (87.4%) donated only once during this study (single, non-duplicated blood donors), while 2067 (12.6%) were repeated or duplicated. The overall prevalence of HBsAg and anti-HBcAb was 2.4% and 10.8%, respectively. Among single non-duplicated blood donors, HBsAg and Anti-HBcAb were 2.3% and 10.6% and 3.0% and 12.5% for repeated blood donors, respectively. There were statistically significant differences between HBsAg and Anti-HBcAb in terms of donor type and testing techniques.

Conclusion: The seroprevalence of HBsAg and anti-HBcAb among the blood donors was 2.0% and 10.3%, respectively. The ECL technique is more sensitive, has a lower error rate, and shows an advantage over the manual EIA technique. Duplicated blood donors influence the accuracy of the seroprevalence of HBsAg and anti-HBcAb.

Keywords: Yemen; blood transfusion; hepatitis infections; serological markers; transfusion transmissible infections.