Prevalence of hepatitis C virus infection among adolescents and youth in Mongolia

Abstract

Background: Hepatitis virus infection and its long-term consequences, such as hepatocellular carcinoma and death, are public health issues global and in Mongolia. About 71 million people, or 1% of the world's population, are living with chronic HCV infection. In 2018, 93 cases of hepatitis C were registered in Mongolia, which is 0.3 per 10,000 population, which is not decreased the previous year. Therefore, we aimed to study the prevalence of HCV infection in adolescents and youth. Goal: To define prevalence hepatitis C virus infections among Mongolian adolescence and youth. Materials and methods: Population based cross-sectional study was conducted. We had a sample size of a total of 6883 people, who had been selected randomly. We used a questionnaire for data collection. Our laboratory analyses were done using the fully automatic HISCL-5000 from the Sysmex Corporation of Japan and tested Anti-HCV markerfor HCV. Statistical analysis was done using the IBM SPSS Statistics 25.0 package. Results: Among a total of 6883 participants, 4.2% Anti-HCV-positive. The prevalence of people living with HCV is likely to increase with age. The proportion of people with HCV is similar in Ulaanbaatar, aimag centers, and soums, with 4.1-5.6% with HCV (p=0.091). Conclusion: Prevalence of HCV infection was 4.2% among adolescents and youth in Mongolia. The prevalence of people with HCV infection is likely to increase with age. The prevalence of people living with HCV infection is similar in Ulaanbaatar, aimag centers, and soums.