ABSTRACT

Hepatitis E virus (HEVJ is, the major etiologic agent of enterically transmitted non-A, non-B hepatitis RNA virus. Untill the announce of the correlation between increased HEV seroconversion and positive anti-HEV antibody with the Hepatitis C seroconversion, in the patients who are blood transfused and in the hemodialysis (HD) treatment, it made a think that the two epidemiologically different virusus may have a common contamination way.

According to that we determined HEV seroconversion in 94 patients regularly in HD therapy with a mean age 34.2 12.5 years, 21 patients in continuous ambulatory pe-ritoneal dialysis (CAPD) therapy with a mean age 33,9 ± 12,8 years, 42 HD unit workers with a mean age 28,8 ± 6, 7 years and 107 healthy persons who don't work in HD unit with a mean age 32,9±12,5 years in our study. Furthermore, in patients having HD therapy, the relationship of serologic signs of HCV and Hepatitis B virus (HBV), dialysis duration, seance and number of blood transfusion with the HEV seroconversion was investigated.

While positive anti HEV rates were detected as 7.4% in HD group, 7.1% in dialysis unit workers, 6.4% in healthy persons except HD workers, in CAPD patients group HEV seraconversion was not detected. In HD group, patients who are anti-HEV positive I negative showed no differences in case of age, gender, HbsAg, anti-Hbc, positive anti-Hbs, di-alysis duration, seance and number of blood transfusion, also the anti-HEV positive patients compared to negative ones HCV seroconversion was higher (85. 7 % and 62 %), s-tatistically no difference observed.

Our results have shown that there is no correlation between HEV seroconversion and the hemodialysis treatment, blood transfusion and positive anti-HCV.