RESUMO
Objectives: Nursing staff is at potential danger of getting HCV infection. Objective of present study is to determine the prevalence and associated risk factors of hepatitis C among nurses in Lahore, Pakistan. It also aimed to estimate the HCV genotypes and find out any relationship between their working area and the incidence of HCV infection
Setting: Various public and private hospitals of Lahore
Period: January 2013 to December 2013
Subjects and Method: This study comprised 186 Nurses. All the samples were processed for Anti-HCV antibody detection through ELISA by using third generation ELISA Kit. Genotyping was also performed on all positive samples. In this study the data were analyzed using SPSS version 16. A P-value < 0.05 was considered to be significant
Results: A total of 186 nurses were enrolled and screened for Anti HCV in the study. The mean age of reactive and non reactive nurses was 22.33 +/- 1.15 and 23.66 +/- 1.97 years, respectively. Working experience in surgical wards, habits for going to beauty salon as well as the purpose for which nurses visited beauty salon was significantly associated with HCV status. i.e. p-value<0.05. Out of 9 reactive nurses, 8 patient nurses had 3a viral genotype while 01 patient had un-typeable viral genotype
Conclusion: In our study nine nurses have HCV infection and are at danger of the disease.The working area especially surgical wards is a source of infection of HCV