Pakistan Journal of Biological Sciences1028-88801812-5735Asian Network for Scientific Information10.3923/pjbs.2013.747.750AlishiriGholam Hossein GhorbaniGholam Ali AhmadSalimzadeh 1220131615Rheumatoid arthritis is a progressive and destructive inflammatory disease of the joints. They had increased mortality depend to use of immunosuppressive drugs. Hepatitis B virus infection is also a health problem in the world. Iran is moderate prevalence endemic area for Hepatitis B virus and it is come too reduced recently by children vaccination. Aim of this study is determined prevalence and screening of Hepatitis B virus infection in rheumatoid arthritis patients. This study is a descriptive cross-sectional which all patients with rheumatic arthritis recruited to study in Tehran in 2012. Then HbsAg and HbcAb assayed for each subjects. In 268 rheumatoid arthritis patients which (82.2%) were female and the average age is 46±14 years old. HbsAg and HbcAb were positive in 4(1.49%) and 9(3.35%), respectively. Only between duration of rheumatoid arthritis and HbcAb had significant association (p<0.014). The present study highlights Rheumatoid arthritis patients treated with immunosuppressive drugs are at increased risk to reactivation of hepatitis B virus, so screening for Hepatitis B virus infection should be performed prior to immunosuppressive therapy.]]>Alavian, S.M., N. Zamiri, M.M. Gooya, A. Tehrani, S.T. Heydari and K.B. Lankarani,201031478493Chung, S.J., J.K. Kim, M.C. Park, Y.B. Park and S.K. Lee,20093624162420Ghorbani, G.A., S.M. Alavian and H.R. Ghadimi,200811660663Ghrenassia, E., A. Mekinian, S. Rouaghe, N. Ganne and O. Fain,201279100101Kim, D.A. and T.Y. Kim,201037674675Kim, P.S., G.Y. Ho, P.E. Prete and D.E. Furst,20126412651268Lan, J.L., Y.M. Chen, T.Y. Hsieh, Y.H. Chen, C.W. Hsieh, D.Y. Chen and S.S. Yang,20117017191725Lee, D.M. and M.E. Weinblatt,2001358903911Mandl, P., E. Naredo, R.J. Wakefield, P.G. Conaghan and M.A. D'Agostino,20113820552062Manzano-Alonso, M.L. and G. Castellano-Tortajada,20111715311537Marusawa, H.,S. Uemoto, M. Hijikata, Y. Ueda, K. Tanaka, K. Shimotohno and T. Chiba,200031488495Mori, S.,201121621627Ndongo, S., A. Pouye, D. Dia, N.M. Mbaye and F.K. Lekpa et al.,201171632633O'Brien, S.F., M.A. Fearon, Q.L. Yi, W. Fan, V. Scalia, I.R. Muntz and E.C. Vamvakas,20074718091815Ramalingam, S., T. Leung, H. Cairns, P. Sibley and M. Smith et al.,200740105109Ramezani, A., M. Banifazl, A. Eslamifar and A. Aghakhani,20104658661Roche, B. and D. Samuel,201131104110Roux, C.H., O. Brocq, V. Breuil, C. Albert and L. Euller-Ziegler,20064512941297Ryu, H.H., E.Y. Lee, K. Shin, I.A. Choi and Y.J. Lee et al.,201231931936Stanmore, E.K., J. Oldham, D.A. Skelton, T. O'Neill, M. Pilling, A.J. Campbell and C. Todd,20132013Summers, G.D., C.M. Deighton, M.J. Rennie and A.H. Booth,20084711241131Tamori, A., T. Koike, H. Goto, S. Wakitani and M. Tada et al.,201146556564Tanaka, E. and Y. Urata,201242333339Tan, J., J. Zhou, P. Zhao and J. Wei,20123111691175Urata, Y., R. Uesato, D. Tanaka, K. Kowatari, T. Nitobe, Y. Nakamura and S. Motomura,2011211623Vassilopoulos, D., A. Apostolopoulou, E. Hadziyannis, G.V. Papatheodoridis and S. Manolakopoulos et al.,20106913521355Watanabe, K., K. Takase, S. Ohno, H. Ideguchi, A. Nozaki and Y. Ishigatsubo,201222470473