In recent time, controversy have been stirred up over the aetiology of liver failure in diabetic patients. Hence, this study was carried out to determine the incidence of Hapatitis B surface antigen and Hapatitis C antibodies in diabetic patients at OOUTH. 5ml venous blood samples was collected from the diabetic patients, centrifuged at 1500 rpm for 5minutes and screened for HBV and HCV using ELISA and Diaspot Kits respectively. Out of the 230 diabetic patients screened for Hepatitis Virus Infection, 49 (19.6%) of them were positive while 185 (80.4%) were negative. HBV infection was highest in frequency by 43 (95.6%), followed by HBV and HCV co-infection, with a frequency of 2 (4.4%). Gender and ages of diabetic patients were observed not to have significant relationship with the incidence of viral hepatitis infection (P>0.05). Incidence of viral hepatitis was significantly higher in uneducated and widowed diabetic patients (P<0.05). Higher incidence of viral hepatitis infection was found to be significantly associated with tattooing (P<0.05) while no significant association was observed between same infection and each of alcoholism, blood transfusion, previous surgery and number of sex partners (P>0.05). When the diagnostic test result of diaspot was compared with ELISA, sensitivity of 11.1% and 82.2% were respectively observed (P<0.05).In conclusion, this study has established that the incidence of viral hepatitis was higher among diabetic patients with no formal education, those who are widows, and tattoo. It was further discovered that diaspot is less sensitive compared to ELISA
Keywords: Aetiology, Diabetes, ELISA, HBV, HCV, Hepatitis, Liver
