Abstract

Objective: It is not known exactly how COVID-19 and common viral hepatitis HBV and HCV infections affect each other’s course. The effects of drugs used in the treatment of COVID-19 patients on the liver and the risk of acute hepatic exacerbation in patients with Hepatitis B infection are another issue that needs to be investigated. All these reasons require investigation of the relationship between COVID-19 and HBV and HCV infections. The aim of this study was to determine the seroprevalence of Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C infections in patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and to evaluate the clinical characteristics of the patients.

Methods: This study is a cross-sectional prevalence study. The study included 1026 patients over the age of 18 who applied to the COVID-19 outpatient clinic of the university hospital between January 1 and June 30, 2021 and whose PCR test was found to be positive. Participants were verbally informed about the content of the study and their written consent was obtained. The personal information form was applied by the researcher through face-to-face interviews. Venous blood samples were taken by COVID outpatient clinic nurses and Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), Anti HBs, Hepatitis B core antibody (Anti-HBc IgG), Anti HCV, aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT), total bilirubin, direct bilirubin, indirect bilirubin and hemogram values were studied. Statistical analysis of the data was performed using the IBM SPSS 20 package program. Kruskal-Wallis H and Mann-Whitney U tests were used for comparisons between groups. Statistical significance was accepted as p<0.05.

Results: The average age of the participants was 45.11±16.12, 53.6% (n=550) were female, 30.0% (n=308) were high school graduates, and 25.7% (n=264) were housewives. The most common clinical complaints in patients were cough 39.9%, fatigue 34.3% and fever 26.1%. 55.4% of the participants had no known chronic disease. The most common chronic disease was hypertension 19.3%. In patients with positive PCR tests, seropositivity rates for HBsAg, anti-HCV, anti-HBs and Anti-HBc IgG were found as 1.4% (n=14/1026), 0.5% (n=5/1026), 48.5% (n=498/1026), 18.2% (n=187/1026), respectively. When the hepatitis serology results of the patients were compared according to gender, Anti-HBs negativity was found to be higher in women than in men (p=0.034).

Conclusion: The seropositivity rates of HBV and HCV in patients diagnosed with COVID-19 were found to be lower than those in the general population when compared to seroprevalence studies conducted in our country and region. Based on these data, chronic viral hepatitis may not be considered a primary risk factor for COVID-19. However, more detailed new studies are needed to definitively prove this idea and show the interaction between COVID-19 and viral hepatitis.

Keywords: COVID-19, Hepatitis B infection, Hepatitis C infection, Seroprevalence

Copyright and license

Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to cite

1.
Çeliköz MC, Şensoy N, Gürbüz M, Dur G, Demirtürk N. Evaluation of Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C Seroprevalence in Patients Diagnosed with COVID-19. Turk J Fam Pract. 2024;28(4):149-154. https://doi.org/10.54308/tahd.2024.59389

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