Testing strategies looking forward

Abstract

The early days of the AIDS epidemic brought tragic conse-quences for blood recipients. However, the attention, reflec-tion, resources and research triggered by the epidemic ledto the development of highly effective approaches for theprevention of transmission of infectious agents by transfu-sion of blood-, components- and plasma-derived therapeu-tic proteins. Before the availability of screening assays,prevention focused exclusively on the deferral of individu-als thought to be at higher risk of transmitting the infectionfrom donating blood components or plasma for furthermanufacture. Undoubtedly, the most significant currentcontributors to recipient safety are the testing of blooddonations for the most relevant diseases transmissible bytransfusion in the area where the blood was collected, andthe implementation of quality systems that guarantee theadoption of appropriate screening assays and their useaccording to good laboratory practices.This summary follows two in-depth reviews about assaysavailable for the screening of blood donors in this session;one, by M. Busch, addresses serological assays and theother, by M. Schmidt, looks at molecular assays. This sum-mary is purposely focused on thoughts about choices ofassays, current testing strategies and future technologicaladvances in the context of different countries with differentepidemiology of transfusion transmitted infectious diseases(TTID) and variable resources available for transfusionsafety.