Abstract
BackgroundHepatitis B virus infection (HBV) is one of the most widespread, chronic viral infections in sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of South America. Therefore, efforts are being made to implement strategies aimed at reducing the incidence of hepatitis B viral infections. One route of HBV transmission is through unsafe blood transfusion, which could occur from the use of less sensitive laboratory diagnostic kits. Information on the sensitivity and specificity of these kits is however limited in many developing countries. This study was therefore performed to describe the prevalence of HBV infections and also to evaluate the performance of five rapid immunochromatographic kits commonly used in Ghana.MethodsA cross-sectional study was designed to describe the prevalence of HBsAg infection and also evaluate the performance of rapid kits used for screening hepatitis B in the northern part of Ghana.ResultsA total of 164 prospective blood donors were enrolled in this study from January 2012 to December 2013. The overall true prevalence of HBsAg was 14.6 (95% CI = 9.6 – 21.0). There was no significant association between transmission related factors and HBV infection. The specificities of all five rapid kits were above 97%, however the sensitivities and Youden’s indexes were below 60%. A comparison of the reported kit sensitivities to those generated by this study showed significant difference with the study results being lower than the ones reported in the kit literature.ConclusionOur study has shown that rapid HBsAg kits on the Ghanaian markets may not be helpful for screening blood donor samples. We therefore recommend the use of commercially available enzyme linked immunosorbent assays.
Highlights
Hepatitis B virus infection (HBV) is one of the most widespread, chronic viral infections in sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of South America
Type of study A cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate the prevalence of hepatitis B surface antigen among blood donors and to evaluate the performance of rapid kits used for screening blood donors
Markers among subjects positive for Hepatitis B Surface Antigen (HBsAg) and evaluate the performance of rapid kits used for screening hepatitis B in the northern part of Ghana
Summary
Hepatitis B virus infection (HBV) is one of the most widespread, chronic viral infections in sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of South America. HBV infection is an important public health concern which requires active surveillance to be conducted in other remote rural areas of Ghana. Surveillance of HBV infection is important for both detection and exclusion of blood donors, the utility of less sensitivity diagnostic kits could pose significant risk to patients. In Ghana and many developing countries, HBsAg screening is usually performed using rapid immunochromatographic tests (ICT). This method is preferred over the conventional assays like the enzyme linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) because ICT kits are simple, quick, and cheaper. Another advantage of the ICT kits is their flexibility in terms of using both whole blood and plasma samples from subjects
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