The prevalence of hepatitis B virus infection in a village

To the Editor; Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection can be found all over the world and is associated with a broad spectrum of d iseases such as chronic carrier state, chronic active hepatitis, liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Hepatitis B is spread mainly by parenteral routes. There are 200 million carriers of the virus in the world. Most attention has been paid to countries either belonging to the third world or to industrialised countries. Turkey, however can not be assigned to either of these groups. With respect to HBV infection in Turkey, there are many repor ts wh i ch s h o w e d that the p e r c e n t a g e o f hepat i t is su r face ant igen posi t iv i ty ranged from 3.85% to 8.6% (1-2), but only one study exists in a particular region (3). Therefore, we started an investigation to evaluate the epidemiology of hepatitis B in a rural region in Ankara.