[Geographical differences in the incidence of Australia antigen in chronic liver diseases]

In order to evaluate the role of the Australia Antigen and of the many other factors commonly invoked in the etiology of chronic liver diseases a series of study have been performed by radioimmunoassay on: a group of blood donors who showed persistent antigenemia and two groups of patients with chronic hepatitis who were studied respectively at Brescia General Hospital and at the Departement of Internal Medicine of the University of Naples. The results were as it follows: 1) Liver damage, from mild to severe (from transient increase of GOT and GPT levels to cirrhosis) was present in 69 out of 145 blood donors with persistent antigenemia. 2) Antigenemia was more frequent in the neapolitan group of patients not only when considering the entire study population (39%) but also when the cirrhotic group was considered (40.7%). In the Brescia study group the figures were 11.7% and 8.6% respectively. 3) Comparable high incidence of antigenemia was present in both groups when only patients with chronic aggressive hepatitis and liver carcinoma were considered. 4) When only patients with chronic persistent hepatitis and chronic aggressive hepatitis were considered the incidence of antigenemia was remarkably different.