Abstract
A prevalence study of HBV serologic markers was carried out among hospital employees of ten departments of the Second School of Medicine in Naples, an urban area with a high prevalence of HBV infection.
Departments and occupational categories were selected to represent a spectrum of different exposure to B virus infection. Workers in a large electronic plant in the same geographical area were screened as controls. HBsAg prevalence was 4.8% in the hospital community and 4.0% in control group. It rises to 4.3% in the Campania Region, where all screened workers live, and in some specific areas of the same region it rises to 12%. But no significant difference among seropositivities for at least 1 marker of HBV, considered to be a better indicator of occupational hazard, was found among personnel of different departments or belonging to different occupational categories. None of the occupational and non-occupational risk factors studied was found to be significantly associated with HBV infection.
Two years later, an incidence study was carried out among susceptible subjects. Seropositivity for 1 marker was 2.2% among hospital workers and 2.8% in the control group. These figures are lower than the annual attack rate (5%) required for an acceptable cost-benefit ratio of vaccination against hepatitis B.
Our results indicate that in a geographical area with HBV endemicity the occupational hazard for B virus infection is low in hospital workers because of the high number of immunized subjects and the contacts with infected people out of the hospital.
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Antoniello, S., Auletta, M., Cerini, R. et al. Hepatitis B virus infection among health care workers at an urban teaching hospital in southern Italy: A low occupational hazard?. Eur J Epidemiol 5, 228–233 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00156836
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00156836