Exposure to hepatitis A virus among blood donors, injecting drug users and prison entrants in Victoria

Abstract

To assess prevalence of exposure to hepatitis A virus (HAV) among injecting drug users (IDUs) and prison entrants in Victoria, and to compare this with prevalence of HAV among a reference population of blood donors, sera stored from two previous studies and from randomly selected blood donors were tested for total antibody to HAV. The first study was a longitudinal study of field-recruited IDUs from 1990 to 1992 and the second was a study of all prison entrants in 1991-92 (both studies were carried out in Victoria); blood donors were from the Australian Red Cross Blood Bank Victoria in 1995. Forty-five per cent of 2175 prison entrants and 51% of 293 IDUs were seropositive for HAV, compared w..