title: Epidemiological shift of hepatitis A in central Adana, Turkey.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The aim of the study was to determine the epidemiological shift that may have occurred in the last 11 years of Hepatitis A virus (HAV) seroprevalence.
  
  
  METHODS
  In 1998, we reported the anti-HAV seroprevalence in 711 children aged between 2 and 16 years children in Adana city center. Eleven years later we repeated the same study at the same locations in a similar population with the same method.
  
  
  RESULTS
  From 1998 to 2009 anti-HAV seroprevalence declined from 33.9% to 22.2%, 29.5% to 25.3% (p>0,05), 52.2% to 30.8%, 69.7% to 35.2%, 66.9% to 37.7% and 71.4% to 47.3% (p<0,0001) in the age groups of 48-71, 72-95, 96-119, 120-143, 144-167 and 168-198 months respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study showed that anti-HAV seroprevalence has decreased statistically significantly during the last 11 years in school-aged children. Results showed that anti-HAV seroprevalence has shifted to further ages. Since adolescents and young adults are at risk of symptomatic HAV infection, routine hepatitis A vaccination of children will be initiated in 2012 in Turkey.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatric Infectious Disease, Çukurova University Faculty of Medicine, Adana, Turkey. gtumgor74@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Emre
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Alhan
authors.forename: Banu
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kozanoğlu
authors.forename: Gökhan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tümgör
authors.forename: Ümit
authors.initials: Ü
authors.lastname: Çelik
authors.forename: Akgün
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Yaman
authors.forename: Nafiz
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Bozdemir
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006506:Hepatitis A / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D016036:Seroepidemiologic Studies; D014421:Turkey / Q000453:epidemiology