Comment on: Seroprevalence of hepatitis B virus and human immunodeficiency virus among young prisoners.

Sir,

I read with great interest the paper by Ataie et al. about seroepidemiology of hepatitis B virus (HBV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in adolescent prisoners.[1] Despite useful information, these comments may be useful for more clarification of the results.

We have no data about the hepatitis B surface antigen in their mothers as any other important risk factor in this group. Authors could compare their findings with similar results of such age and sex group in different populations in Iran (at least their previous similar study)[23] or even other countries.[4]

An interesting finding of the present study is a low percentage of cases with positive hepatitis B surface antibody (HBsAb). I expected to see subgroup analysis according to this variable that compares cases with and without HBsAb. Authors did not compare results of cases with different serologic markers of HBV and HIV because of low frequency of positive seromarkers. However, they could compare characteristics and risk factors of cases with and without HBsAb where the number of both cases with positive and negative HBsAb is not low. Moreover, such studies with census of all samples do not need to mention P value, even when we compare the results of some group with another group in our study. For example, cases with positive and negative HBsAb.

Since, these cases are younger than 19 years old, it is better to nominate them as adolescent (teenager)[5] and not young (which is referred to persons with higher than 19 years old).[6]

AUTHOR'S CONTRIBUTION

AK contributed in the conception of the work, drafting the work, revising the draft, approval of the final version of the manuscript, and agreed for all aspects of the work.