Patients with a non-ST elevation ACS who showed no event within 6 months are characterized by a decrease in hs-CRP levels from baseline to follow-up. Most events in the observation period of 3 years occurred in patients with follow-up hs-CRP levels > 60% of the initial level. Therefore, it was hypothesized that a repeated measurement of hs-CRP levels in CAD patients could help to discriminate those at high risk of further events.
BACKGROUND
RNA viruses are associated with a high frequency of mutations because of the missing proofreading function of polymerases, such as reverse transcriptase. Between 2007 and 2010, six blood donations with false‐negative nucleic acid technology (NAT) results were reported in Germany. Therefore, NAT screening in two viral genome regions was introduced by our blood donation service in 2010 on a voluntary basis and became mandatory in Germany since the beginning of 2015.
STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS
Blood donor screening was done using, in parallel, the German Red Cross (GRC) HIV‐1 CE long terminate repeats (LTR) PCR kit and the GRC HIV‐1 gag CE PCR kit. In total, 7 million blood donations were screened during the study period from 2010 to 2014 with the GRC dual‐target human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV‐1) NAT system. Additionally, three suspicious specimens were analyzed by four monotargeted NAT assays and by five dual‐target NAT assays.
RESULTS
Three of 7 million donations tested negative using the 5’LTR–polymerase chain reaction, but they were positive if amplification was performed in the gag region. HIV antibodies were detected in all three donations. Nucleic acid sequence analysis identified a deletion of 22 bases within the 5’LTR probe binding region. Three different ltr‐based monotargeted assays missed two donations, except for a low‐reactive result obtained by one of the assays. In total, the detection rates for HIV‐1–positive donations were 37.5% (3/8) for monotargeted assays and 100% (10/10) for dual‐target assays.
CONCLUSION
The current data demonstrate that dual‐target NAT systems reduce the risk of false‐negative HIV‐1 NAT screening results.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.