Emerging Infectious Diseases (Jan 2005)

Hepatitis C Virus Infection, Linxian, China

  • Mingdong Zhang,
  • Xiu-Di Sun,
  • Steven D. Mark,
  • Wen Chen,
  • Lara Wong,
  • Sanford M. Dawsey,
  • You-Lin Qiao,
  • Joseph F. Fraumeni,
  • Philip R. Taylor,
  • Thomas R. O’Brien

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3201/eid1101.031005
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 17 – 21

Abstract

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Bloodborne viruses may have spread in rural China during the past 25 years, but population-based prevalence estimates are lacking. We examined the frequency of hepatitis C virus (HCV) and HIV type 1 (HIV-1) among residents of Linxian, a rural community in Henan Province. In 2000, blood was collected from participants (>55 years of age) who had enrolled in a population-based nutritional intervention trial in 1985. We randomly selected 500 participants for HCV testing and 200 participants for HIV-1 testing. For HCV, 48 (9.6%) of 500 participants were positive by enzyme immunoassay and recombinant immunoblot assay (95% confidence interval [CI], 7.0%–12.2%), and prevalence was lowest in the most geographically isolated participants. Among the HCV-infected participants, 42 had a specimen available from1985, of which 16 (38.1%) were positive for HCV. For HIV-1, 0/200 participants were positive. We conclude that HCV is now a common infection among older adults in Linxian, China.

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