Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press -December 11, 1996 12.57 pm EST (1757 GMT).
The technology promises to halve the number of tainted transfusions with blood from donors whose infections are too recent to be discovered.
Frank Nordhoff, Gen-Probe Inc.'s president and chief executive, said Tuesday the company hopes to make a combination test available to blood banks nationwide by 1999.
The test, being developed under a $7.7 million contract from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, finds the deadly viruses in newly infected individuals who have not yet developed antibodies that are the traditional signposts of infection.
The Gen-Probe test instead picks up the viruses' genetic material, either DNA or RNA, which shows up in the blood sooner than the antibodies, Nordhoff said.
"Currently, maybe as many as 200 transfusions out of 12 million blood donations may still transmit hepatitis C. This should prevent more than half of them,'' said Dr. Peter Page, senior medical officer for the American Red Cross Biomedical Services.
The test should also prevent more than half of the approximate 20 HIV transmissions from donated blood per year, he said.
It takes 22 days from the day of infection for most antibody tests to detect HIV, the virus that causes AIDS; a quicker test, to pick up a protein in the virus, still takes 16 days.
The Gen-Probe technology can pick up HIV in just 11 days, Page said. For hepatitis C, the 70 days in which the virus can not be detected will be trimmed to 25 days.
The Red Cross estimates that five out of every 100,000 units of donated blood test positive for HIV. For hepatitis C, a virus discovered in 1989 that is a major contributor to cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer, that figure increases to 150 per 100,000 units.
The federal funding will pay for final development of the new test , as well as clinical testing of 30,000 individuals.
Gen-Probe officials said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has promised a speedy, four-month review.
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