International forum: Saudi Arabia. Donor screening for HTLV-I in Saudi Arabia: is it cost effective? NLM AIDSLINE Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

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International forum: Saudi Arabia. Donor screening for HTLV-I in Saudi Arabia: is it cost effective?

Transfus Sci. 1997 Mar;18(1):45-7. Unique Identifier : AIDSLINE HTA/98037880
Bernvil SS; Andrews V; Coulter N; Dept of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, King Faisal Spec.; Hospital and Research Centre, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract: After screening over 100,000 blood donations for the presence of anti-HTLV-I antibodies, a final prevalence of 0.0038% was established in a multinational donor population. Among 38,201 donations by Saudi Arabian donors, the prevalence was found to be 0.0052%. Fifty-eight donors were found to be repeat reactive in the EIA screen test, but only 6.9% of these (n = 4) were truly infected with HTLV-I as judged by the Western blot result. These results indicate that Saudi Arabia is non-endemic for HTLV-I as well as HTLV-II. The cost effectiveness of screening for HTLV-I in healthy blood donors from this area is highly questionable. Calculations point to a final risk of a case of post-transfusion HTLV-I associated disease of approximately one per 100 years at the current level of activity.
Keywords: *Blood Donors Blood Transfusion/*ADVERSE EFFECTS Human HTLV-I/*ISOLATION & PURIF HTLV-I Infections/EPIDEMIOLOGY/ETIOLOGY/*PREVENTION & CONTROL Mass Screening Saudi Arabia/EPIDEMIOLOGY JOURNAL ARTICLEKWDblooddonorsbloodtransfusion/KWDadverseeffectshumanhtlv-i/KWDisolation&purifhtlv-iinfections/epidemiology/etiology/KWDprevention&controlmassscreeningsaudiarabia/epidemiologyjournalarticle
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M9820772

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