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A prospective study of the risk of transfusion‐acquired viral infections
Author(s) -
; Murphy,
David R. Busch,
Tong Tong,
Cornett,
Girish N. Vyas
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
transfusion medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.471
H-Index - 59
eISSN - 1365-3148
pISSN - 0958-7578
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-3148.1998.00148.x
Subject(s) - medicine , incidence (geometry) , blood transfusion , confidence interval , prospective cohort study , hepatitis c , hepatitis c virus , immunology , virus , optics , physics
The risk of transfusion‐transmitted viral infections may be estimated by several methods, but only prospective studies of transfusion recipients can directly measure the incidence, with associated 95% upper confidence bound, of these infections. From 1989 through 1995, 764 recipients of allogeneic or autologous red blood cell transfusions were enrolled; 486 (64%) provided both pretransfusion and 6‐month follow‐up specimens. Both specimens were tested for anti‐HBc, anti‐HCV, anti‐HTLV‐I and anti‐HIV, with appropriate confirmatory testing. Thirty‐nine (8.0%) subjects had seroprevalent anti‐HBc, 19 (3.9%) subjects had seroprevalent anti‐HCV, three (0.6%) subjects had seroprevalent anti‐HTLV‐I/II, and one (0.2%) subject had seroprevalent anti‐HIV. There were no seroconversions for any agent among the 34 patients who received only autologous blood, and no confirmed seroconversions for anti‐HTLV‐I or anti‐HIV among all subjects. There were three seroconversions for anti‐HBc (incidence 1.04 × 10 −3 ; 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.15 × 10 −4 , 3.05 × 10 −3 per allogeneic unit transfused), and two confirmed seroconversions for HCV (incidence 6.94 × 10 −4 ; 95% CI 8.34 × 10 −5 , 2.51 × 10 −3 per allogeneic unit transfused). One of the two anti‐HCV seroconversions occurred in March 1994, after the institution of HCV EIA 2.0 screening of donated blood. Transfusion‐associated seroconversions to hepatitis B and C markers were observed at low rates in the early 1990s despite testing donors for markers of both viruses, whereas seroconversions to HTLV‐I or HIV were less than 1.04 × 10 3 per allogeneic unit transfused, based upon the upper 95% confidence interval of the zero incidence in this study.