antitetanus toxoid antibody titer of chronic hemodialysis patients in iran

background: patients with end stage renal disease have higher incidence of infection dis-eases that is thought to be related to impaired immune system. objective: to determine the antitetanus igg antibody level in iranian hemodialysis patients with end stage renal disease and to find its association with sex, age, blood hemoglobin, serum albumin, dura-tion of dialysis, time of dialysis per week, dialysis adequacy, erythropoietin, or iron sup-plementation, body mass index (bmi) and underlying renal disorder. methods: we con-ducted a cross sectional study on a total of 108 iranian hemodialysis patients with end stage renal disorder, and 36 healthy individuals in the control group matched with the pa-tient group. the patients and controls did not receive any antitetanus vaccine or immu-noglobulins a year prior to the investigation. the serum antitetanus igg antibody levels were measured by an elisa method. results: we found 74.3% of patients to have un-protected antitetanus igg antibody level compared with 52.8% of the control group. ex-cept hemodialysis duration, none of the contributing factors seemed to affect immunity. conclusion: we conclude that in our study, there is a significant difference in the an-titetanus igg antibody level between hemodialysis patients and the control group and also in the chronic hemodialysis patients.