Donor minipool NAT screening for HBV, HCV, and HIV: a 2-year experience in a private hospital in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Blood transfusion is a life-saving approach, although it carries the risk of transfusion-transmitted viruses (TTVs). In Saudi Arabia (SA), nucleic acid amplification test (NAT) has been obligatory for HCV, HBV, and HIV by 2008. Our aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of NAT for detection of TTVs in the blood donated at Saudi German Hospitals (SGH) in SA. A total of 12,437 donor samples from SGH between January 2009 and June 2011 were subjected to routine serologic tests for HBV, HCV, and HIV followed by minipool NAT using Cobas Amplicor analyzer (Roche Diagnostics) for the seronegative samples. Out of 12,032 seronegative plasmas, five (0.042 %) were positive for HCV and two (0.017 %) for HIV-1 by NAT. None of our seronegative donors were NAT positive for HBV, highlighting the value of hepatitis B core antibody detection in donor testing. Our results provide evidence to support the effectiveness of NAT screening to detect TTVs in blood donations.