Hepatitis B virus infection and associated factors among antenatal care attendees in Dessie City Administration, North-East Ethiopia: a case-control study

Abstract

ABSTRACT The hepatitis B virus remains a major public health problem due to a variety of risk factors, which we aimed to investigate in Dessie City Administration, Ethiopia. Unmatched case-control study was conducted from February to May 2021 using systematic random sampling. The data were collected using an interviewer-administered questionnaire, then cleaned using EpiData version 4.6.0 and exported to SPSS version 25.0 for analysis. The odds ratio with a 95 percent CI was used to determine the association between the independent and outcome variables. A total of 421 participants (105 cases and 316 controls) were enrolled. A history of having multiple sexual partners (AOR = 4.64; 95 percent CI: 2.64–8.14); a history of abortion (AOR = 3.18; 95 percent CI: 1.78–5.66); the presence of a hepatitis B carrier in the family (AOR = 8.70; 95 percent CI: 4.26–17.77); a history of hospitalization (AOR = 2.98; 95 percent CI: 1.56–5.69); and retroviral seropositivity (AOR = 3.68; 95 percent CI: 1.55–8.74) were independent risk factors for having hepatitis B virus infection. In conclusion, antenatal infection with the virus was found to be determined by the number of sexual partners, abortion and hospitalization, hepatitis B carriers in the family, and retroviral seropositivity, which dictates the need for integrated community-wide intervention.