Background and Objectives: Hepatitis A is the most common form of viral hepatitis. Though it does not cause chronic disease, it can cause significant economic and social consequences in the community. The most important risk factors associated with the viral infection are unsafe water, poor personal hygiene and inadequate sanitation. It is symptomatic in only 4-16% of the infected children compared to 75-95% of the adults. As socioeconomic status and access to safe drinking water are increasing, recently an epidemiological transition has been observed about the HAV infections in India. There is a decline in HAV infection rate and clinical disease in children and increase in the number of susceptible adolescents and adults. This is suggestive of an area with intermediate endemicity in contrast to being a hyper endemic area as thought before.  This study aims to find out the seroprevalence of anti Hepatitis A virus IgG antibodies in healthy adults in Central Kerala using ELISA technique.

Materials and Methods: This Cross sectional study was conducted in asymptomatic healthy adults including  voluntary blood donors , antenatal women presenting to Government Medical College Hospital, Thrissur, Kerala and the medical students of the same college from January 2016-December 2016. Serum samples obtained from 270 subjects were subjected to screening for Anti HAV IgG antibodies using commercially available Enzyme linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) kit.

Results: Out of 270 subjects tested, 41(15.2%) were positive for IgG anti HAV antibodies.

Conclusion: The present study confirms the declining seroprevalence rates for IgG antiHAV antibodies in the general population. Further larger seroprevalence studies have to be carried out especially among children to assess the need of introduction of Hepatitis A vaccination under universal immunization programme.

Keywords: Hepatitis A virus; IgG Anti-Hepatitis A virus antibodies; ELISA; Seroprevalence; epidemiological transition; vaccination.

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Dr Jasmine Kulapurath Abdul Kader

Department of Microbiology, Government Medical College, Thrissur, Kerala, India Pin code: 680596