ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

Research Article | Open Access
Alaa Abdulrahman Mohammad Mustafa1, Wafaa Mohammed Abdalla1, Hind Haidar Ahmed1, Samar M. Saeed1, Ahmed Ibrahim Hashim1, Sarrah Elnoor Khalifa1, Ahmed Bakheet AbdAlla2, Tagwa Salah Ahmed3 and Kashaf Junaid3
1Department of Microbiology, College of Medical Laboratory Science, Sudan University of Science and Technology, Sudan.
2Department of Parasitology and Medical Entomology, College of Medical Laboratory Science, Sudan University of Science and Technology, Sudan.
3Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences, College of Applied Medical Sciences, Jouf University, Al Jouf 72388, Saudi Arabia.
J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2022;16(1):585-592 | Article Number: 7492
https://doi.org/10.22207/JPAM.16.1.57 | © The Author(s). 2022
Received: 15/12/2021 | Accepted: 20/01/2022 | Published online: 25/02/2022
Issue online: March 2022
Abstract

Although hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection has been widely understood as a public health concern in pregnant females, it is sometimes overlooked because of unusual observations of hepatitis E-induced complications during pregnancy. The objective of this descriptive cross-sectional study was to find out how frequent Hepatitis E virus infection is in pregnant women in Sudan. Blood samples were collected from pregnant women (n = 90) attending Khartoum North Hospital from February to December 2019. The specimens were investigated for Hepatitis E virus IgG and IgM antibodies using the commercial kits based on the enzyme immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technique. Out of ninety pregnant women, 36 (40%) were found positive for IgG antibodies, and 5 (6%) were tested positive for IgM antibodies. In addition, 13 (14.5%) of the positive cases are women in their third trimester. These data showed a significant association between previous Hepatitis E virus infection and miscarriage (p <0.001). This study did not find a significant association between maternal and gestation age, education, water sources, and hepatitis E virus infection. In conclusion, there was a high percentage of HEV infections among pregnant women attending Khartoum North Hospital. This study estimates the Hepatitis E virus burden in Khartoum state, but more extensive studies are required to confirm the burden in Sudan.

Keywords

Hepatitis, Pregnancy, Viral infection, ELISA

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© The Author(s) 2022. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.