Hepatitis B virus infection in Iran; Changing the epidemiology

INTRODUCTION Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is the main cause of chronic liver disease in Iran (1,2). The epidemiology of HBV infection in Iran has been changed during the last two decades (1) and infantile vaccination with high coverage is the main cause for this change (3,4). The prevalence of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) in the country was reported between 2.5% and 7.2% in 1979 (5). It was estimated that there were one million HBsAg positive carriers among 35 million Iranians at that time (5). In the 1980s, almost 3% of the Iranian population was affected, differing from 1.7% to 5% in different provinces (1,2). It was estimated that over 35% of Iranian have been exposed to the HBV and about 3% were chronic carriers (5). In a study performed on 250,000 healthy volunteer blood donors in Tehran, 3.6% of male and 1.6% of female donors were HBsAg carriers (6). The prevalence rate of HBsAg positivity is low now, with HBsAg carrier rate about 2% (7). In general population, this prevalence was 1.7% and 2.49% (8) in 1992 and 1993, respectively. Another study showed that HBV prevalence is 1.07% in blood donors in Shiraz in 2000 (9). The reported prevalence, ranging from 1.7% in Fars Province to over 5% in