Risk of Zika virus transmission by blood donations in Brazil

Abstract

BackgroundZika, a disease caused by Zika virus infections, has recently emerged and caused outbreaks in many parts of the world. The clinical manifestations of Zika are usually mild, mostly presenting as an exanthematic febrile disease, but on some occasions, it might be associated with microcephaly after intrauterine infection, and Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Zika virus is primarily transmitted by mosquito bites, but other means of transmission have been described, and potential risk for blood transmission has been reported in French Polynesia and Brazil.MethodsTo investigate the risk of Zika virus infection after a blood transfusion in an area of Brazil where a possible transmission by a platelet concentrate has been described. Using a mini-pool format, 1857 blood donations were evaluated by real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction designed to detect Zika virus RNA.ResultsAfter testing samples individually from positive mini-pools, the prevalence of Zika virus RNA was only 0.16%, a result probably associated to the low circulation of this virus in the study area. In addition, it was evident that the implementation of post-surveillance programs is important to detect Zika virus infections in blood donors, as the post-donation surveillance program detected two blood donors with the disease in this study.ConclusionThis study shows that the risk for Zika virus transmission by blood transfusion is real, even in regions with a low circulation of the disease, but the combination of the detection of Zika virus RNA by polymerase chain reaction and post-donation surveillance might reduce the risk of transmission by blood transfusions.

Epidemic potential of Zika virus in Australia: implications for blood transfusion safety

“…Most recently, Zika virus (ZIKV) has been shown to have potential for TT. Transmission of ZIKV through platelet transfusion has been reported in Brazil, and a number of countries have detected ZIKV‐positive blood donations …”

Zika virus RNA surveillance in blood donors in the Federal District of Brazil during the 2016 outbreak

“…We adopted as a true estimated ZIKV prevalence the mean prevalence obtained from four previous studies examining ZIKV infection in Brazilian blood donors (0.71 %). 5 , 7 , 8 , 9 The minimum sample size calculated to be tested for estimation of the ZIKV prevalence in blood donors was 269 donations; however, we tested a higher number of samples (475 blood donations).…”

A new multiplex RT-qPCR method for the simultaneous detection and discrimination of Zika and chikungunya viruses

“…The 2016 ZIKV epidemic in Brazil, spreading rapidly to other South American countries and North America (Armstrong, 2016;Chen and Hamer, 2016;Faria et al, 2016;WHO), also supports this reality. Moreover, autochthonous transmission of CHIKV (Cunha et al, 2017;Delisle et al, 2015;Grandadam et al, 2011;Kabir et al, 2017;WHO, 2016b) and ZIKV (Moi et al, 2017;Musso and Lanteri, 2017;WHO, 2018b;Zanluca et al, 2015) has been observed, as well as sexual transmission (D'Ortenzio et al, 2016;Davidson, 2016;Deckard, 2016;Foy et al, 2011;McCarthy, 2016;Musso et al, 2015b), mother-to-child/perinatal transmission (Besnard et al, 2014;Calvet et al, 2016;Gérardin et al, 2014;Oliveira Melo et al, 2016;Ramful et al, 2007), and transmission via blood/platelet transfusion (Brouard et al, 2008;Magnus et al, 2018;Motta et al, 2016;Musso et al, 2014). These different ways of transmission/infection put the global population at risk, especially as there is currently no vaccine against ZIKV or CHIKV.…”