Hepatitis B&C virus infection in cases of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in Saudi Arabia

We followed 565 male patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) in two hospitals of Saudi Arabia. We investigated these cases for presence of hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) by determining the HBsAg and anti-HCV. Anti-HCV positive cases were confirmed by PCR. The NHL cases were classified on the basis of working formulation. The results of HBV and HCV in cases of NHL were compared with the prevalence of these viruses in healthy male blood donors. We found 11.2% of cases of NHL were positive for HBV and 16.1% for HCV, compared to 3.4% HBV and 2.9% HCV among blood donors. The highest numbers of cases (48.4% of HBV and 56% of HCV) were seen in the intermediate and low grade of NHL, respectively. Follicular small cleaved was the predominant type in both types of infection. The variation in prevalence of HBV and HCV in NHL from that of the general population was statistically significant (p<0.001). We observed that the background prevalence of HBV definitely affects the rate of infection in NHL, while infection of HCV in cases of NHL is independent of its background prevalence.