الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Our study is a cross-sectional study that was carried out on five hundred and fifty subjects classified into two groups: group I consisted of five hundred persons who are healthy blood donors in Alexandria Hospital Blood Bank while group II comprised fifty patients with various neurological diseases admitted to Alexandria University Hospitals. • We found that HEV prevalence was relatively low within the blood donor group with 22.6% and 0.8% prevalence of HEV IgG and IgM respectively, with no gender-specific prevalence. • It was noticeable that the highest affected age group was 40-50 years old representing 31.3% while the least affected were those aged 20-30 years old (18.2%) • We noticed that HEV IgM was found only in four persons. Two persons had positive HEV RNA PCR. • We found that the most common presenting diagnosis in the neurologically affected patients was Guillian Barre Syndrome (32%), followed by myelitis/myelopathy and myasthenia gravis (22% each). While only 4% of the patients were diagnosed with encephalitis. • It was noticed that Guillian Barre Syndrome (GBS) was more common in males while myelitis/myelopathy was more common in females. • Routine laboratory investigations and liver function tests for group II showed that no significant abnormalities in the routine laboratory results with normal to mildly elevated liver function tests i.e. ALT and AST. • It was found that 44% of patients had IgG-positive test results for HEV, while only 4% were IgM positive • Four patients (8%) had a positive result for HEV RNA PCR testing. • We found that 36.4% suffering from myelitis/myelopathy were diagnosed with HEV infection. There was a significant correlation with HEV infection • Comparing HEV seropositivity in patients with neurological disorders with subjects without neurological disorders, the comparison was statistically significant with a p value of 0.001. |