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Introduction The paucity of data on hepatitis' epidemiology in Menoua Division, west region, Cameroon, prompted us to assess the prevalence of viral and non-viral hepatitis in this area. Methods A retrospective exhaustive study based on records of patients from January 2008 to June 2014 was conducted in 9 health centres in Menoua Division. Targeted subjects were patients who did not receive hepatitis vaccines for the past year and have been screened for hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and/or a blood transaminase. Associations between variables were quantified with odd ratios (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). Cochran-Armitage test of linear trend was used for testing proportions of ordinal variables. Fisher's exact test was used for testing the association between 2 qualitative variables when expected counts were less than 5. Results The overall prevalence were 9.6% and 6.7% for HBV and HCV respectively. HBV mostly infected people aged 21-30 (12.4%) while the prevalence of HCV increased with age up to 35.4% (p=0.03). A 0.6% co-infection was observed. Thirty percent of positive HBV or HCV had high transaminase while 13% of patients with elevated transaminase showed negative viral serology. Conclusion These results show that hospital-based prevalence of HCV and HBV in Menoua Division is under the Cameroon's national range but point out the fact that non-viral hepatitis might be a serious case of concern in this area. There is therefore, a need to identify the risk-factors of non-viral hepatitis.

Lipid peroxidation plays a pivotal role in the pathogenicity and maintenance of hepatitis. Thus, substances protecting hepatocyte membranes from lipid peroxidation are of great importance in the management of hepatotoxicity and hepatitis. The present work deals with the in vitro hepatoprotective activity of the methanol extract of Desmodium uncinatum, its sub-fractions, the major isolated compounds and some of their semi-synthetic derivatives in order to study structure activity relationships. Using hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2)-induced lipid peroxidation of hepatocyte membranes as a model, the hepatoprotective-guided phytochemical survey of the methanol extract of aerial parts of D. uncinatum was carried out by successive column chromatography. One of the most active compounds (Isovitexin) was chemically transformed to yield new semi-synthetic. The identification of isolated and semi-synthetic compounds was performed using NMR techniques, mass spectrometry and by comparison of their data with those reported in the literature. The n-butanol fraction was the most effective (IC 50 : 22.9 µg/mL) compared to the crude methanol extract (IC 50 : 43.6 µg/mL) and other fractions. The n-butanol sub-fractions FA (containing non-phenolic compounds) and FB (mainly containing phenolic compounds) exhibited respective IC 50 of 14.36 and 128.2 µg/ml.