%0 Journal Article
%T Prevalence of Hepatitis B Infection in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients
%A Gholam Hossein Alishiri
%A Gholam Ali Ghorbani
%A Salimzadeh Ahmad
%J Pakistan Journal of Biological Sciences
%D 2013
%I Asian Network for Scientific Information
%X Rheumatoid arthritis is a progressive and destructive inflammatory disease of the joints. They had increased mortality depend to use of immunosuppressive drugs. Hepatitis B virus infection is also a health problem in the world. Iran is moderate prevalence endemic area for Hepatitis B virus and it is come too reduced recently by children vaccination. Aim of this study is determined prevalence and screening of Hepatitis B virus infection in rheumatoid arthritis patients. This study is a descriptive cross-sectional which all patients with rheumatic arthritis recruited to study in Tehran in 2012. Then HbsAg and HbcAb assayed for each subjects. In 268 rheumatoid arthritis patients which (82.2%) were female and the average age is 46¡À14 years old. HbsAg and HbcAb were positive in 4(1.49%) and 9(3.35%), respectively. Only between duration of rheumatoid arthritis and HbcAb had significant association (p<0.014). The present study highlights Rheumatoid arthritis patients treated with immunosuppressive drugs are at increased risk to reactivation of hepatitis B virus, so screening for Hepatitis B virus infection should be performed prior to immunosuppressive therapy.
%K screening
%K immunosuppressive HbsAg
%K RA
%K HBV
%U http://docsdrive.com/pdfs/ansinet/pjbs/2013/747-750.pdf