Background and Objectives: To monitor the safety of the blood supply and evaluate the potential benefits of additional measures, the likelihood of virus transmission must be assessed. The European Plasma Fractionation Association and its member organisations have therefore developed a surveillance system to monitor infection markers among unpaid blood and plasma donors. We report and analyse the results of this surveillance for 1997. Materials and Methods: Data from the screening of unpaid donations for anti–HIV, anti–HCV and HBsAg during 1997 were collected retrospectively by EPFA member organisations. We identified seroconverters and estimate the probability of window period donations. Results: Data included screening results from 11 million unpaid donations in Europe, the USA and Australia. Prevalence of viral markers varied, with marker rates from repeat donations in Europe and Australia being significantly lower than in the USA. For first– time donations, in contrast, prevalence of HBsAg in the USA was within the ranges of those measured in Europe and Australia. Screening data of about 5 million European and 0.5 million Australian repeat donations were used to identify seroconverters. From the seroconverters that were detected among the European organisations, we estimated that 1 in every 2,323,778 repeat donations (range: 707,090–20,922,520) was made during the window period of anti–HIV screening. One in 620,754 (201,216–2,316,805) and 1 in 398,499 (155,209 to >1,088,511) repeat donations were made during the anti–HCV or HBsAg window period, respectively. Probabilities of window period donations in Australia were within the ranges of those measured in Europe. Conclusions: The collated surveillance data of 1997 illustrate the high degree of safety in blood and plasma products from unpaid donors.
Treatment of human plasma with methylene blue in combination with visible light (MB/light) inactivates several bloodborne viruses such as retro viruses and herpes viruses. The viral nucleic acid is thought to be a critical target for the inactivation procedure. We investigated the effects of photodynamic treatment on the RNA of hepatitis C virus (HCV) and human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) using Amplicor reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), which detects and quantifies a small fragment of the viral RNA. The detectable HCV RNA load (5-nontranslated region) in infected human plasma declined by 94-97 % within 10 min of illumination in small-scale experiments (1-2 ml vol.). Since the same effect was observed in both anti-HCV positive and negative ("window") samples, it can be concluded that HCV antibodies do not influence virus inactivation by photodynamic treatment. The effect of treatment on RT-PCR signals of HIV-1, which is known to be inactivated rapidly by MB/light treatment, was examined. Plasma was infected with HIV-1 and subjected to RT-PCR, which detected a part of the gag gene. The extent and kinetics of PCR signal reduction induced by MB/light treatment were similar to those observed for HCV. Experiments at production scale where single plasma units (300 ml) were infected with HCV showed reduction rates of PCR signals consistent with those measured in the small-scale experiments. The data support the view that MB/light treatment affects the viral nucleic acids and suggest that HCV is susceptible to the procedure.
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