AIDSWEEKLY Plus; Monday, August 9, 2004
Staff Medical Writers

"French blood banks recently implemented nucleic acid testing (NAT) of all blood donations to reduce the risk of HIV transmission during the pre-seroconversion period. For tissue donation, HIV infection screening relies on HIV p24 antigen and anti-HIV1 and 2 antibody detection," wrote scientists in France.

"In this report," F. Najioullah and colleagues reported, "two related cases of infectious donations are described from a cornea donor during the preseroconversion window who was infected by an HIV antibody and NAT negative blood donor.

"After investigation, the blood donor was found to be herself in the preseroconversion window. Two months after donation, she was found to be HIV positive."

The authors continued, "The residual risk of HIV infectious blood donations since NAT has been introduced is estimated to be lower than one out of 2.5 millions. Individual NAT instead of minipool testing would not increase significantly the blood transfusion safety."

"In contrast," Najioullah concluded, "introduction of NAT should be considered to increase tissue donation safety as soon as such screening will be possible technically."

Najioullah and colleagues published their study in Journal of Medical Virology (Failure and success of HIV tests for the prevention of HIV-1 transmission by blood and tissue donations. J Med Virol. 2004 Jul;73(3):347-9.

For additional information, contact F. Najioullah, Hopital Edouard Herriot, Laboratory Virology, EA 3085, Domaine Rockfeller, F-69373 Lyon 08, France.

The publisher's contact information for the Journal of Medical Virology is: Wiley-Liss, Division of John Wiley & Sons Inc., 111 River St., Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA.

The information in this article comes under the major subject areas of Blood Banking, Infectious Disease, HIV/AIDS, Nucleic Acid Testing, and Risk Factor.

This article was prepared by AIDS Weekly editors from staff and other reports.

Reference

Najioullah F, Barlet V, Renaudier P, et al., "Failure and success of HIV tests for the prevention of HIV-1 transmission by blood and tissue donations", J Med Virol. 2004 Jul;73(3):347-9.

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