Prevalence of hepatitis C virus antibody among university students in Nigeria

BACKGROUND: It has long been known that HCV infection is endemic in Nigeria with variable prevalence rates reported among subgroups and regions. Here we report the prevalence of HCV antibody among teenage university students in south-western Nigeria. METHODS: We performed a cross-sectional study involving 2406 teenage students with a mean age of 17.3 years at Babcock University, Ilisan-Remo, Ogun-State, Nigeria. RESULTS: In total, 18 of the participants blood samples were reactive for HCV antibody with no difference between males and females. CONCLUSIONS: The 0.7% HCV antibody prevalence rate found in the participants in our study is lower than the overall prevalence of 2.1% recorded for Nigeria. This study provides further evidence of a low HCV prevalence among young healthy teenage university students in Nigeria.