Application of immune adherence hemagglutination test in the screening of blood donors carrying a high titer antibody to varicella-zoster virus.

Abstract

The immune adherence hemagglutination (IAHA) test was compared with the complement fixation (CF) test and fluorescent antibody (FA) test to measure the antibody titer to varicella-zoster virus (VZV) in 70 sera of convalescents 2 to 8 weeks after herpes zoster onset. The IAHA titer correlated with the FA titer, but not with the CF titer which was lower than the IAHA and FA titers. Then, the IAHA test was used for screening of blood donors with a high titer (higher than 64 units) of antibody to VZV from 2,592 blood donors. About 14% of the sera from the donors aged 16 to 19 years had an antibody titer higher than 64 units, about 10% of sera from the donors aged 20 to 49 years, and 5.6% of sera from the donors older than 50 years. An average positive rate was about 9%, indicating that an enough VZV immune plasma with a high titer of antibody might be obtained from blood donors.immune adherence hemagglutination test ; varicella-zoster virus ; zoster immune globulin Varicella-zoster virus (VZV) infection in an immunosuppressed patient causes severe consequences. It is well known that the administration of VZV immunoglobulin (VZVIG) or immune plasma (VZVIP) to the immunosuppressed patients is markedly effective and safe (Judelsohn et al. 1974;Balfour et al. 1977;Lane et al. 1980). The source of VZVIG or VZVIP, however, is limited, because they have been obtained from the blood of convalescents from herpes zoster infection. Hejjas et al. (1980) reported that 1% of blood donors had a high titer of antibody to VZV (higher than 64 units) by complement fixation (CF) test.

Relationship between serum anti‐varicella zoster virus antibody titer and time from onset of herpes zoster

“…Kawai et al . titrated the anti‐VZV‐CF activity of donor blood, and in a population over 50 years old, only 5.6% were anti‐VZV‐CF‐positive.…”

“…Kawai et al 7 titrated the anti-VZV-CF activity of donor blood, and in a population over 50 years old, only 5.6% were anti-VZV-CF-positive. However, more sensitive tests such as radioimmunoassay can detect specific antibodies in anti-VZV-CF-negative sera, 8 and almost all the adults over 20 years old are anti-VZV-IgG-positive.…”