Prevalence of Hepatitis B among Men Admitted to a Federal Prison

To the Editor: The prevalence of the carrier state for hepatitis B among residents of penal institutions has been noted in previous Journal articles to be markedly elevated over that in the general population, ranging from 1.5 per cent to 2.1 per cent in the former group, as compared with 0.08 per cent in the latter.^{1 2 3 4} These studies demonstrated the unsuitability of prisoners for use in blood-donation drives, but little work on this population has appeared since then. Using the third-generation radioimmunoassay, we tested all 293 men newly admitted to a federal prison for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg).