Open AccessImmuno-hematological consequence of intravenous drug abuse?
Author(s) -
Aikaj Jindal,
Anil Luther,
Aseem Kumar Tiwari,
Amit Mahajan,
Subhasis Mitra
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
asian journal of transfusion science
Language(s) - Uncategorized
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.262
H-Index - 22
eISSN - 1998-3565
pISSN - 0973-6247
DOI - 10.4103/ajts.ajts_88_19
Subject(s) - medicine , syringe , drug , intravenous drug , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , substance abuse , blood transfusion , drugs of abuse , antibody , intensive care medicine , hepatitis , notice , virology , immunology , pharmacology , viral disease , psychiatry , political science , law
Intravenous (IV) drug abuse has been well established to be the source of transfer of infections, such as HIV, hepatitis C virus, and hepatitis B virus. However, often overlooked fact is that IV drug abusers have a potential for developing alloimmunization due to universal practice of flushing/washing out the syringe by own blood to rinse out the drug in the syringe. We present here a case of a 28-year-old man who presented with a rather unique predicament of having developed four different alloantibodies after exposure to allogenic blood through IV drug abuse. This case was detected promptly due to routine usage of type and screen policy for all the patients receiving transfusion. Such screening for atypical antibodies must be instituted to preemptively identify these antibodies and arrange compatible blood, which could have been difficult otherwise, at short notice during routine crossmatch. This is the first of its kind case ever reported from India and has no precedence.