Kaabia N, Ben Jazia E, Slim I, Fodha I, Hachfi W, Gaha R, Khalifa M, Hadj Kilani A, Trabelsi H, Abdelaziz A, Bahri F, Letaief A. Association of hepatitis C virus infection and diabetes in central Tunisia. World J Gastroenterol 2009; 15(22): 2778-2781 [PMID: 19522029 DOI: 10.3748/wjg.15.2778]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Dr. Elhem Ben Jazia, Department of Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, Unit of Research: 04/UR/08-21, University Hospital Farhat Hached, Sousse 4000, Tunisia. elhem.benjazia@rns.tn
Article-Type of This Article
Brief Articles
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This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Naoufel Kaabia, Ines Slim, Wissem Hachfi, Mabrouk Khalifa, Fethi Bahri, Amel Letaief, Elhem Ben Jazia, Department of Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease, Unit of Research: 04/UR/08-21, University Hospital Farhat Hached, Sousse 4000, Tunisia
Imen Fodha, Halim Trabelsi, Microbiology Unit, University Hospital Sahloul, Sousse 4000, Tunisia
Rafika Gaha, Ahmed Abdelaziz, Epidemiology Unit, University Hospital Farhat Hached, Sousse 4000, Tunisia
Aoutef Hadj Kilani, Department of Medicine, Msaken hospital, Sousse 4000, Tunisia
Author contributions: Kaabia N, Ben Jazia E and Slim I contributed equally to this work; Hachfi W, Khalifa M, Hadj Kilani A, Bahri F and Letaief A designed the research; Fodha I and Trabelsi H performed microbiological assessment; Gaha R and Abdelaziz A analyzed statistical data.
Correspondence to: Dr. Elhem Ben Jazia, Department of Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, Unit of Research: 04/UR/08-21, University Hospital Farhat Hached, Sousse 4000, Tunisia. elhem.benjazia@rns.tn
Telephone: +216-73-211183
Fax: +216-73-211183
Received: November 21, 2008 Revised: April 29, 2009 Accepted: May 6, 2009 Published online: June 14, 2009
Abstract
AIM: To investigate hepatitis C virus (HCV) seroprevalence in Tunisian patients with diabetes mellitus and in a control group.
METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the HCV seroprevalence in 1269 patients with diabetes (452 male, 817 female) and 1315 non-diabetic patients, attending health centers in Sousse, Tunisia. HCV screening was performed in both groups using a fourth-generation enzyme immunoassay.
RESULTS: In the diabetic group, 17 (1.3%) were found to be HCV-infected compared with eight (0.6%) in the control group, although the difference was not significant (P = 0.057). Quantitative PCR was performed in 20 patients. Eleven patients were positive and showed HCV genotype 1b in all cases.
CONCLUSION: Frequency of HCV antibodies was low in patients with diabetes and in the control group in central Tunisia, with no significant difference between the groups.
