Epidemiological shift of hepatitis A in central Adana, Turkey

The aim of the study was to determine the epidemiological shift that may have occurred in the last 11 years of Hepatitis A virus (HAV) seroprevalence.

In 1998, we reported the anti-HAV seroprevalence in 711 children aged between 2 and 16 years children in Adana city center. Eleven years later we repeated the same study at the same locations in a similar population with the same method.

From 1998 to 2009 anti-HAV seroprevalence declined from 33.9% to 22.2%, 29.5% to 25.3% (p>0,05), 52.2% to 30.8%, 69.7% to 35.2%, 66.9% to 37.7% and 71.4% to 47.3% (p<0,0001) in the age groups of 48-71, 72-95, 96-119, 120-143, 144-167 and 168-198 months respectively.

Our study showed that anti-HAV seroprevalence has decreased statistically significantly during the last 11 years in school-aged children. Results showed that anti-HAV seroprevalence has shifted to further ages. Since adolescents and young adults are at risk of symptomatic HAV infection, routine hepatitis A vaccination of children will be initiated in 2012 in Turkey.