To explore the overall infection state of Hepatitis B virus(HBV) in Korea
during the 1980's, the standard valuesl weighted mean values) of infection ratelllt), the
acute infection rate(AIR), and the chronic carrier ratelCCR) of HBV were estimated
through summerizing the serological data from previous articles. The data used in this
analysis include some cross sectional and a few follow-up studies, and were limited to
those tested by the methods of radio immunoassay(RIA), reverse passive hemagglutiuation(
RPHA), passive hemagglutination(PHA), or enzyme immunoassay(EIA) in order
to maximize the validity. Using the sensitivity and specificity of each test method,
we corrected the serological positivities from all data as if they were tested by RIA
only. The age and sex specific IRs, AIRs, and CCRs of HBV were estimated, and the
age adjusted rate for each sex was also estimated on the basis of the age structure of
the 1985 population census. The IRs for men and women are 61.3% and 52.8%, the
AIRs are 3.3% and 2.9%, and the CCRs are 4.7% and 3.3%, respectively
