Introduction: Hepatitis screening pose a vital role among hemodialysis patients, starting from HBsAg to advanced screen-
ing using advance technique such as PCR. Occult Hepatitis B infection can be defined as those who are HBsAg negative,
HBcAbs positive, and HBV DNA PCR positive. There is a gap of knowledge regarding Occult hepatitis B infection among
hemodialysis patients world wild. In Palestine, there is a need to study the Hepatitis screening practices in hemodialysis
unites.
Methods: this study was conducted among 266 hemodialysis patients in Al Najah National University hospital. The inclu-
sion criteria were hemodialysis patients who were HBsAg negative at baseline screening. The HBcAb test was done for all
the recruited patients, while the HBV DNA PCR was done only for patients who were HBcAb positive.
Results: After six months, all patients who were found HBcAb negatives at basleine, were tested again for HBcAb, among
those who were HBcAB positive at six month the HBV DNA PCR was done. The results: A total of 249 patients were
included in the study, the mean age was (56.8±14.5) years. The overall prevalence of occult hepatitis B infection among
the patients at the end of the study was 4.7% (4/85) but only 4.5% (12/266) of the hemodialysis patients were positive for
HBsAg. About 34.1% (85/249) of the hemodialysis patients were anti-HBc positive. Further analysis was done employing
Chi Square test. Although the association between the hemodialysis sessions with HBcAb test was not significant at base-
line; the analysis revealed significant association between being HBcAb positive and hemodialysis session (p<0.05) after
six month. Similar findings were reported by dividing the hemodialysis sessions into two groups according to session days
at p< 0.05 using the same statistical test.
Conclusion: Considerable incidence of Occult Hepatitis B infection among hemodialysis patients was reported, which
necessitate more screening tests and control policies. Which may indicate that HBsAg assay is not sufficient for accurate
screening of HBV infection among hemodialysis patients.
Keywords: Occult hepatitis B virus; HBV DNA; infection; viral transmission; Hemodialysis

Title

Journal of clinical and medical images

Publisher

Tech Science Press.

Publisher Country

China

Indexing

Scopus

Impact Factor

None

Publication Type

Both (Printed and Online)

Volume

3

Year

2023

Pages

9