%0 Journal Article %T Incidencia de la infecci¨®n por el virus de la hepatitis A diagnosticadas en la ciudad de Maracaibo, estado Zulia, Venezuela %A Costa-Le¨®n %A Luciana %A Porto-Espinoza %A Leticia %A Monsalve-Castillo %A Francisca %A Callejas-Valero %A Diana %A Est¨¦vez %A Jes¨²s %A Castellanos S¨¢nchez %A Mar¨ªa Elena %J Kasmera %D 2010 %I Scientific Electronic Library Online %X hepatitis a virus (hav) infection continues to be a public health problem in developing countries. the aim of this study was to determine incidence of the hepatitis a virus infection in a population from maracaibo, venezuela. from january, 2004 until december, 2007, this study was carried out on 1056 individuals, whose ages were between 1-60 years (average ¡À ds: 27.48 ¡À 5.24 years), coming from the maracaibo and san francisco municipalities, venezuela. the igm antibody against hav was determined by the elisa technique. the overall incidence was 26.6%. the north, south, east and west areas of the maracaibo municipality and the san francisco municipality in the city of maracaibo showed incidences of 73 (35.1%), 76 (28%), 66 (24.3%), 35 (20.3%) and 31(23.3%), respectively. the highest incidences were observed in females under 20 years (47.3%) and males under 10 years (53.7%). the most frequent clinical sign was jaundice in 95.7% of patients. deficient sanitary conditions and hygiene habits seemed to be the main risk factors in spreading hav infection. %K hepatitis a virus %K sanitary conditions %K igm anti-hav. %U http://www.scielo.org.ve/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0075-52222010000100006&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en