Frequency of Thalassemia and Its Association with Hepatitis C Infection in Local Population of Pakistan

Abstract

Background and Objective: Thalassemia major or βeta-thalassemia is a hereditary blood disorder, necessitating continuous blood transfusions. Frequent blood transfusions often result in the development of hepatitis, hepatocellular carcinoma, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and many other infectious diseases. Incidence of infection of viral hepatitis in thalassemia patients is majorly associated with infections in the donor population. The objective of this study was to ascertain the frequency of HCV infection in patients with thalassemia in Pakistan.Methods: This study was conducted from January 2015 to September 2018 in various sections of Punjab and Sindh, Pakistan. A total number of 439 patients were enrolled in this study, samples of blood from the patients were collected and their Anti-HCV antibodies were evaluated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA); HCV-RNA genome presentation was assessed by HCV-nested-real time-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for the confirmation.Results: It was found that major population of the thalassemia patients were male (63%). While the female thalassemia population was almost twice in Sindh province as compared to Punjab. In present study, n = 187 were detected positive among those n = 168 were confirmed by PCR. Only 47% thalassemia patients were found vaccinated against hepatitis B whereas all HCV positive patients were not vaccinated, and (84.96%) thalassemia patients were from the family of first cousin marriage. The patients which are not vaccinated also had significant chance to acquire the viral infection (P < 0.001). Moreover there could be some gender and environmental or geographical factors associated with thalassemia that are yet to be explored in detail.Conclusion: Thalassemia patients carry major risk for acquiring transfusion associated infection