SUMMARY Viral antibody-titres were measured in 28 patients with Bell's palsy seen in Baghdad. These cases were selected to include only those seen within 24 hours from onset. No association with recent viral infection other than rubella virus was demonstrated. Four cases showed immunological evidence of simultaneous rubella virus infection but without other clinical evidence of the disease.The cause of Bell's palsy is unknown and the disease is still labelled "idiopathic" .1 Park and Watkins2 analysed 500 cases of Bell's palsy. They suggested that an inflammatory process was the essential part as evidenced by the clinical course, pleocytosis and elevated protein in the CSF in some cases. Other causes such as vasospasm, secondary ischaemia, viral infection or immunological disturbances have been postulated.' 3 The present study was designed to detect those patients with serological evidence of simultaneous infection with a number of viruses including rubella, mumps, measles, herpes simplex, varicella-zoster, cytomegalovirus and influenza viruses. Patients, materials and methodsThe material of our study consisted of all patients with Bell's palsy seen in the first 24 hours after onset of symptoms. Patients seen after 24 hours, or those who had an obvious cause for the facial palsy (such as trauma, Guillain-Barr6 syndrome or middle ear disease), were excluded from the study. An 18-year-old woman with bilateral simultaneous facial palsy was included after exclusion of Guillain-Barre syndrome by repeated CSF examination over 3 weeks, and by electromyography and nerve conduction studies. Of the 28 patients, 14 were male and 14 female. Ages ranged between 11-70 years with a mean age of 39-6 years.All patients had a full blood count, ESR and blood chemistry (including fasting blood sugar, serum creatinine, blood urea, liver function tests, serum electrolytes, serum cholesterol and serum uric acid). Skull radiology with special views of petrous bone and internal auditory meatus on the affected side, and electromyographic and nerve con- duction studies also were performed. All patients had their serum estimated for viral antibody titres on presentation and in the third week after presentation. Antibody titres to herpes simplex, mumps, meales, rubella, varicella-zoster, cytomegalovirus and influenza A and B viruses were measured. A four-fold or more rise in the titre was regarded as evidence for recent infection with the virus concerned. Rubella virus isolation was not performed for technical reasons. All patients were monitored daily during the first week for clinical evidence of infection with these viruses. Thereafter, they were followed up at fortnightly intervals for at least 6 months and a few of them for up to one year.

Background: HEV is the etiologic agent of acute hepatitis E. Although HEV usually causes a self-limiting infection, the disease may develop into a chronic or fulminant form of Hepatitis. Sporadic HEV infections spread in several developed countries; however, outbreaks usually occur in regions where sanitation is low, in particular, in developing countries where water flooding frequently occurs. In addition, religious background, life style, hygienic practices, and the economic status have been linked to HEV infection. Fecal-oral is the established route of transmission, however, infections through blood transfusion were recently documented in many developed and developing countries. This recent finding raises the question: is there is a need for HEV screening prior transfusion or transplantation? Studies related to this issue, in the Middle East are scarce. Although the CDC HEV epidemiological map, classifies the Arabian Gulf countries including Qatar as endemic or highly endemic, to the best of our knowledge, no HEV population –based epidemiological study were conducted in Qatar. HEV infection is usually detected using IgM and IgG serological tests and confirmed by molecular tests for detection of viral RNA. Yet, commercially available HEV serological kits are not validated, and needs further investigation. Aim and Methods: Qatar has a diverse population due to increased number of expatriate workers. The majority of these workers usually come from low economic status countries that are highly endemic for HEV such as Egypt, Sudan, India and other South East Asian countries. This fact highlights the need for an epidemiological study concerning HEV prevalence in Qatar. Accordingly, we hypothesize that HEV seroprevalence in Qatar is elevated, and therefore, there is a risk of HEV transfusion transmitted infections in Qatar's blood bank. The goals of this study are (i) to investigate the seroprevalence of HEV (anti-HEV IgM/IgG) among healthy blood donors in Qatar and (ii) to evaluate performance of 5 common commercially available anti-HEV IgG and IgM kits (manufactures by Wantai Biological Pharmacy, China; MP Biomedicals & Diagnostic Automation, USA; and Euroimmun & Mikrogen Diagnostik; Germany). All of these kits are solid phase ELISA based, except the Mikrogen kit which is immunoblot based. A total of 4056 blood donor samples were collected from healthy blood donors visited the Blood Donation Center at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) over a period of three years (2013-2015). For seroprevalence study, plasma were separated and tested for the presence of HEV IgG and IgM using Wantai ELISA kit, which, is the most commonly used serological kit according to literature. For statistical analysis, chi-square test was performed and results were considered statistically significant when the p-value were less than 0.05. Results: Out of total 4056 analyzed samples, almost one quarter of blood donors, 829 (20.45%) tested positive for anti-HEV IgG and only 21 (0.52%) blood samples tested positive for anti-HEV IgM. As shown in Fig. 1, HEV seroprevalence was associated with age group (P