Hemophilia Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Hemophilia, including details on genetics, causes, symptoms, blood transfusion.

Detection of hepatitis A virus from clotting factors implicated as a source of HAV infection among haemophilia patients in Korea.

Jee YM, Go U, Cheon D, Kang Y, Yoon JD, Lee SW, Shin YH, Kim KS, Lee JK, Jeong EK, Yang BK, Cho HW

Division of Enteric and Hepatitis Viruses, Department of Virology, National Institute of Health, Seoul, Korea. ymeejee@nih.go.kr

To investigate the causal relationship of blood clotting factors and hepatitis A virus (HAV) infection in haemophilia patients during 1998-1999 in Korea, we performed a 1:3 matched case-control study and molecular detection of HAV from clotting factors and patients. The epidemiological investigation showed that one lot of clotting factor VIII was related epidemiologically to patients with hepatitis A with an odds ratio of 35.0, or 38.4 when adjusted for the interval between injections. We examined 17 sera collected from seven patients and 124 lots of blood clotting factors (factor VIII and factor IV) by HAV reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). HAV RNA was detected in five clotting factors and six sera. The HAV sequence of one of the factor VIII samples was identical to the sequences found in three patients' sera. Findings from the laboratory and epidemiological studies suggested that the clotting factor was causally related to HAV infection in three haemophilia patients.

Published 13 January 2006 in Epidemiol Infect, 134(1): 87-93.
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