Hev seroepidemiology and yearly change in primary school students (6 – 13 YEARS), Ankara, Turkey

The Hepatitis E Virus (HEV) is found widespread throughout the world. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the time-related change of antibody levels against Hepatitis E in primary school children.
The study was carried out in a school of Gölbaşı town of Ankara. The population consisted of 672 students at grade 1 to 7 of the school. A total of 515 students (76.6%) were accessed due to various reasons (family permission, inadequate serum, etc). All the analyses (for the years 2003 and 2005) were performed with these 515 students’ data. Since the duration of the study period was 13 months (November 2003 and January 2005), the alteration of seroprevalence was accepted as one “yearly change”. A commercially available diagnostic anti-HEV ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) kit (Human anti-HEV ELISA, Dia Pro, Milan, Italy) was used to detect anti-HEV antibodies in serum samples in our laboratory studies.  
The mean age of the students was 9.6±0.1 (min6-max 13) years. The seroprevalences of anti-HEV were 1.7% and 2.1% at the first and the second visits respectively. Seven of the children seropositive at first visit and became negative one year later while two were still seropositive. Among children seronegative at first visit, 9 were found to be positive one year later. There were no statistically significant difference between anti-HEV seropositivity and the mother’s and father’s education and employment statuses (p>0.05).
This serosurvey shows not a high prevalence of enterically transmitted viral hepatitis which is similar to developed countries. Hepatitis E seems to have a significant loss of specific antibodies takes place within time.