Abstract
Following reports of West Nile neuroinvasive disease in the north-eastern area of Italy in 2009, all blood donations dating from the period between 1 August and 31 October 2009 in the Rovigo province of the Veneto region were routinely checked to exclude those with a positive nucleic acid test for West Nile virus (WNV). Only one of 5,726 blood donations was positive (17.5 per 100,000 donations; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.4–97.3). In addition, a selection of 2,507 blood donations collected during the period from 20 July to 15 November 2009 were screened by ELISA for IgG and IgM antibodies against WNV. A positive result was received for 94 of them. The positive sera were further evaluated using immunofluorescence and plaque reduction neutralisation test (PRNT), in which only 17 sera were confirmed positive. This corresponds to a prevalence of 6.8 per 1,000 sera (95% CI: 4.0–10.9). In a case-control study that matched each of the 17 PRNT-positive sera with four negative sera with the same date of donation and same donation centre, we did not find a significant association with age and sex of the donor; donors who worked mainly outdoors were significantly more at risk to have a positive PRNT for WNV.
Highlights
West Nile virus (WNV) was originally identified in 1937 in northern Uganda [1]
In accordance with national guidelines [27] that recommend screening of blood donations in affected areas where at least one human case with West Nile neuroinvasive disease (WNND) has been detected, all blood donations performed in Rovigo province during summer 2009 were individually tested by nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT)
One of 5,726 blood donations resulted positive by NAAT, which corresponds to an estimated risk of WNV transmission of about 17.5 per 100,000 blood donations
Summary
West Nile virus (WNV) was originally identified in 1937 in northern Uganda [1]. Birds, especially those in the Corvidae family are the natural reservoir of the virus, which is mainly transmitted to humans through the bite of infected Culex mosquitoes [2,3]. In the past few years, cases of WNV encephalitis have been reported in the Volgograd region in Russia [15], in Hungary [16] and Romania [17], and very recently in Greece [18]
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