Understanding Hepatitis B Prevalence Among Pregnant Women: Insights from a Hospital Study | InformativeBD

Pooja C., Mita D. Wadekar, Jayashree S., and Sathish JV. from the different institute of India. wrote a Reseach Article about, Understanding Hepatitis B Prevalence Among Pregnant Women: Insights from a Hospital Study. Entitle, Status of prevalence of hepatitis-B in pregnant women: A hospital based study. This research paper published by the International journal of Microbiology and Mycology | IJMM. an open access scholarly research journal on Mycology. under the affiliation of the International Network For Natural Sciences| INNSpub. an open access multidisciplinary research journal publisher. 

Abstract 

India has more than 37 million of HBV carriers and contributes a large proportion of the global burden. The perinatal route is the most important route of the transmission. This study was done to estimate the seroprevalence rate of HBV infection in female of reproductive age group. Since sexual and perinatal route transmission are major targets to prevent the infection, the study focused on pregnant females attending antenatal care (ANC) clinic of the hospital. This was a retrospective observational study to determine the prevalence of Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) in Pregnant Women. Two and a half years retrospective study was performed from June 2019 to December 2021. The blood sample was collected as a part of routine screening for HBV infection and the samples were tested for HBsAg. Of the total 1353 antenatal women, 11 (0.81%) were positive for HBsAg in 2019. In the year 2020, of the total 4186 antenatal women, 43 (1.02%) were positive for HBsAg. In the year 2021, of the total 3903 antenatal women, 21 (0.53%) were positive for HBsAg. It is important to screen all the antenatal women for HBsAg to prevent maternal complications and, its transmission to the child and to manage appropriately.

 

Introduction

Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) infection is a global public health problem (Dortey et al., 2020; Abdi et al., 2015). HBV, a DNA virus transmitted percutaneously, sexually and perinatally (ElMagrahe et al., 2010). Despite having an effective and safe vaccine, it affects 350-400 million individuals worldwide (El-Magrahe et al., 2010; Sibia et al., 2016). Among the five different hepatitis viruses, most common virus that affects liver is Hepatitis B virus (Bancha et al., 2020). It causes both chronic infection and has a high risk of development of cirrhosis and liver cancer (Yohanes et al., 2016).

The vertical transmission of HBV from infected mothers to their neonates is one of the most important routes of infection worldwide (Shoghli et al., 2014; Sirilert et al., 2021). Some believe that chronic carriers of HBV in pregnancy are associated with increased rates of miscarriage, gestational diabetes and preterm labor. Chorion angiopathy and reduced function of placenta are the main cause of fetal distress in pregnant women (Abdi et al., 2015).

Barriers to eradication of HBV transmission to offspring include under-utilization of immunoprophylaxis with hepatitis B vaccination and HBV immune globulin (HBIG), as well as failure of immunoprophylaxis. Female patients of childbearing age present a unique challenge to clinicians, who must facilitate appropriate counselling to ensure safe treatment of a mother during pregnancy (Ayoub et al., 2016).

Many international organizations (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, World Health Organization) recommend that all pregnant women to be tested for HBsAg. For many years, even though HBV vaccine & HBIG has been administered to the infant against HBV, perinatal transmission is observed in 10% of children born to mothers with high levels of viremia. For this reason, oral antiviral use in the last trimester has been recommended in some pregnant women in recent years (Bilman et al., 2021).

The UIP (Universal Immunization Program) schedule of India recommends Hepatitis B vaccine to all infants within 24 hours of birth, followed by three doses at 6, 10 and 14 weeks to complete the schedule. In case of an unimmunized adult, the vaccine administered at 0, 1 and 6 months (Das et al., 2019).

Hence this study was done to determine the seroprevalence of HBsAg in otherwise healthy antenatal women.

Reference

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Source : Status of prevalence ofhepatitis-B in pregnant women: A hospital based study