The Study Of Hepatitis C And G Virus Infections Among Heroin Addicts

BACKGROUND: Drug abuse is a global public hazard in the world today. it is harmful to the health of abusers. Once drug abusers become addicts, they only want to obtain drug all day long, as possibility as they can. and don't care about anything else such as diet and daily life. With bad individual hygienic habit, they are poorly nourished, and have a low power to resist disease. In recent years, more and more drug addicts take drug with injection, they don't have minimum sterilize techniques and conditions, and often share syringe needle together, so they easily fall in various complication of infectious diseases, such as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), hepatitis B. C. G and tuberculosis (TB). and also could be infected with other virus. Virus hepatitis is a common infections disease, which is bad to the health of human. It is a decline in the incidence of hepatitis after blood transfusion that the blood has been chosen by examines the markers of HBV. but the infection rate of HCV increases every year after blood transfusion. The GBV-C/HGV, a recently discovered virus to be paid more attention by human, often coinfections with HCV.OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) and hepatitis G virus (HGV) monoinfections and coinfections among heroin addicts with different types and ages of taking drug. And to assess the association of various peptide antibody of HCV with the active of HCV-RNA.METHODS: The sera of 496 heroin addicts and 165 controls were assayed by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) using established primers for HCV-RNA and HGV-RNA. enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for HCV-Ab and HGV-Ab and protein chip for peptide antibody of HCV. Heroin addicts were divided into group IDU(injection drug users) and nIDU(non injection drug users), controls were non drug users and without any other organ diseases. RESULTS: HCV infection was detected in 31.7%(84/265) of IDU. 5.63% (13/231) of nIDU and 2.42% (4/165) of normal controls. Prevalence of infection in IDU was significantly higher than nIDU and controls (PO.01). There was no significant difference between nIDU and controls. Using protein chip. anti-NS5 was significantly associated with HCV-RNA (P<0.05). Compare to the nIDU and controls, the IDU group presented a higher prevalence of HGV[38.9%(103/265) vs. 11.3%(26/231) and 3.03%(5/165), PO.01]. the coinfections of HCV and HGV [18.1%(48/265) vs. 1.3%(3/231) and 0. PO.05].CONCLUSION: Injection drug use (IDU) was one of the highest risk factors for infection hepatitis C and G virus in heroin addicts. The prevalence of coinfections HCV and HGV was significantly higher in IDU than nIDU. Following with drug use ages," the monoinfections and coinfections of HCV and HGV were rising too. So strengthen propagandaand prevention of hepatitis infection should be focused on HCV and HGVin heroin addicts.