_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 2204 https://www.id-press.eu/mjms/index ID Design Press, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences. 2019 Jul 15; 7(13):2204-2207. https://doi.org/10.3889/oamjms.2019.573 eISSN: 1857-9655 Public Health Log-Linear Modelling of Effect of Age and Gender on the Spread of Hepatitis B Virus Infection in Lagos State, Nigeria Oluwole A. Odetunmibi 1* , Adebowale O. Adejumo 2 , Timothy A. Anake 1 1 Department of Mathematics, College of Science and Technology, Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria; 2 Department of Statistics, Faculty of Physical Sciences, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria Citation: Odetunmibi OA, Adejumo AO, Anake TA. Log- Linear Modelling of Effect of Age and Gender on the Spread of Hepatitis B Virus Infection in Lagos State, Nigeria. Open Access Maced J Med Sci. 2019 Jul 15; 7(13):2204-2207. https://doi.org/10.3889/oamjms.2019.573 Keywords: Hepatitis B; Log-linear; Modeling; Transmission; AIC *Correspondence: Oluwole A. Odetunmibi. Department of Mathematics, College of Science and Technology, Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria. E-mail: oluwole.odetunmibi@covenantuniversity.edu.ng Received: 23-Apr-2019; Revised: 24-Jun-2019; Accepted: 25-Jun-2019; Online first: 13-Jul-2019 Copyright: © 2019 Oluwole A. Odetunmibi, Adebowale O. Adejumo, Timothy A. Anake. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) Funding: This research was financially supported by the financial support from Covenant University, Nigeria Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist Abstract BACKGROUND: The effect of age and gender on the transmission of any infectious disease can be of great important because the age at which the host contact the disease may be a determinant on the rate at which the disease will spread. AIM: The purpose of this research is to model the significant effect of age and gender on the spread of hepatitis B virus using data collected from Lagos State, Nigeria. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The data that was used for this research is a ten years data covering the period of 2006 to 2015, which was collected from Nigeria Institute of Medical Research (NIMR). A log-linear modelling approach was employed using R programming language software. Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) method of model selection was used in selecting the best model. RESULTS: It was discovered from the analysis that both factors (age and gender) have a significant effect on the spread of hepatitis B infection. This means that the age at which an individual is tested positive to hepatitis B virus will affect the spread of the disease. In choosing the best model among the four models that were developed, model AY: GY (age & year: gender and year) was found to be the best model. CONCLUSION: Age and gender were found to act as a risk influencer that could have a great effect on the transmission of hepatitis B virus infections in Lagos state, Nigeria. Introduction The word hepatitis comes from the Ancient Greek word hepar (root word heat) meaning 'liver', and the Latin itis meaning inflammation. Hepatitis, therefore, means injury to the liver with inflammation of the liver cells [1], [2]. According to the World Health Organization, “Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver. The condition can be self-limiting or can progress to liver cancer. Hepatitis viruses are the most common cause of hepatitis in the world, but other infections, toxic substances (e.g. alcohol, certain drugs), and autoimmune diseases may also cause hepatitis”. It has been discovered from the literature that there are various types of Hepatitis [3] classified these various types into five major categories, namely: A, B, C, D and E, respectively. These viruses are not related to each other. They differ in their structure, the way they spread among individuals, the severity of symptoms they can cause, the way they are treated, and the outcome of the infection [3]. Among these categories, the most dangerous is Hepatitis B because it leads to chronic disease condition in hundreds of millions of people [4], [5], [6]. Hepatitis B has been described as one of the major infectious diseases in the world today because over 750,000 deaths are attributed to it annually [7], [8], [9]. Hepatitis B infection is a global healthcare problem with particularly high prevalence in developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South-East/Central Asia. Statistics shows that, about 350-400 million individuals worldwide suffer from chronic Hepatitis B virus infection which is a dominant cause of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC): [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17].