Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1989. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press - Saturday, July 8, 1989
The discovery means blood contaminated by the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, could infect transfusion patients, said Dr. Jean Pierre Allain, an author of the study published in Friday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
Allain, of Abbott Laboratories in North Chicago, and fellow researchers studied 35,000 blood plasma samples collected over two years at two plasma collection centers and found seven to be HIV-infected, a number he called "fairly high."
But American Red Cross officials said although the threat of a transfusion recipient being infected by AIDS-contaminated blood plasma is real, the risk is small.
"Of the 2,236 transfusion-associated cases of AIDS reported by the Centers for Disease Control in April 1989, only two cases resulted from transfusions" since HIV-1 antibody began in 1985, said Roger Dodd and Lewellys Barker of the American Red Cross, in an accompanying editorial.
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome is caused by a virus that damages the immune system, leaving victims susceptible to infections and cancer. It is spread most often through sexual contact, needles or syringes shared by drug abusers, infected blood or blood products and from pregnant women to their offspring.
The current licensed test can't detect the AIDS virus until the immune system has produced antibodies to fight it, usually about four weeks after infection, Allain said.
Allain said researchers have developed a test, which awaits federal approval, that can cut the detection time of infection in half by searching for viral particles that appear about two weeks after infection. "At this stage, the HIV is highly infectious, higher than at any other stage," Allain said.
Usually the virus can't be detected until about four weeks after, when antibodies are produced to fight it.
Dodd said the improved test is not necessary because current safety procedures are good enough. The researchers said they knew of no deaths caused by HIV-contaminated blood plasma that had slipped through the screening process.
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