Hepatitis B surface antigenaemia in patients with malignant lymphoproliferative disorders

One hundred and four patients with malignant lymphoproliferative disorders and 5,690 control subjects were screened for the presence of Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) in their sera. Lymphoproliferative disorders included in the study were acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), non Hodgkin's Lymphoma (NHL), chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL), Hodgkin's disease (HD), Burkitt's lymphoma (BL) and multiple myeloma (MM). Screening was done by the Reverse Passive Haemagglutination method using the Welcome kit. The percentage antigenaemia in the patients and control subjects were 35.6 and 7.7% respectively (p less than 0.0001). Using the Odds ratio the relative risk was found to be 6.75. The Odds ratio for individual disorders ranged from 2.8 to 9.17. The results suggest an association between Hepatitis B surface antigenaemia and malignant lymphoproliferative disorders and highlights the risk involved in handling specimens from the patients.