Transfusion-transmissible infections among blood donors in Kathmandu, Nepal

Ashish Chandra Shrestha,Manita Rajkarnikar,Bishnu Raj Tiwari,Prakash Ghimire

doi:10.3855/jidc.311

Abstract

Screening of transfusion-transmissible infections (TTIs) among blood donors can be a cost-effective approach to monitor the prevalence, distribution, and trends of the infections among healthy-looking individuals. The study aimed to determine the seroprevalence of four TTIs, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and syphilis, among blood donors in Kathmandu, Nepal. A total of 21,716 units of blood were tested for the presence of anti-HIV 1/2 IgG/IgM, HBsAg, anti-HCV IgG/IgM, and anti-Treponema pallidum IgG/IgM/IgA using commercial ELISA kits following standard protocols. Statistical analysis was performed using WinPepi Ver 3.8. Seroprevalence of HIV, HBV (HBsAg), HCV and syphilis were observed to be 0.12% (95% CI = 0.08-0.18), 0.47% (95% CI = 0.39-0.57), 0.64% (95% CI = 0.54-0.75) and 0.48% (95% CI = 0.40-0.59) respectively. TTIs were dominant among male blood donors compared to female blood donors. Higher HCV seroprevalence among males compared to females was statistically significant. HIV prevalence was highest among blood donors in the age group 31 to 40 years (P > 0.5). HBV, HCV and syphilis prevalence was highest among blood donors 41 to 50 years age group, 21 to 30 years age group, and 51 to 60 years age group respectively (P < 0.05). HIV and HBV prevalence was relatively higher among first-time donors, whereas HCV and syphilis was relatively higher among the repeated donors (P > 0.05). It is of utmost importance to continue screening donated blood with highly sensitive and specific tests and to counsel donors who are positive to any of the above infections. It is absolutely necessary to avoid the transmission of infection from repeat donors.

Highlights

Blood donation saves millions of lives; blood transfusion plays an important role in the supportive care of medical and surgical patients, unsafe transfusion practices put millions of people at risk of transfusion-transmissible infections (TTIs) [1]
Mandatory screening tests are performed for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) 1 and 2, hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and syphilis by blood transfusion centres in Nepal
Though the prevalence of infections was higher among the male blood donors, only HCV prevalence among males (0.69%) was statistically significant compared to HCV prevalence among females (0.33%) [Table 1]

Summary

Introduction

Blood donation saves millions of lives; blood transfusion plays an important role in the supportive care of medical and surgical patients, unsafe transfusion practices put millions of people at risk of transfusion-transmissible infections (TTIs) [1]. HBV seroprevalence has been reported to range from 0.3% to 4.0% in the general population of Nepal by various studies conducted from 1990 to 2003 [8,9,10,11,12,13]. HCV seroprevalence among Nepalese general population and blood donors has been reported to range from 0.1 to 1.7% [4,10,11,12,16,18,19,20,21]. Very little information is available on the prevalence of syphilis in the general population, one of the focussed studies has reported it as 0.6% among Nepalese males [8]. No study has been conducted to determine the prevalence of one or two of these infections at a time in Kathmandu, Nepal. The prevalence of TTIs can reveal the problem of unnoticeable infections in healthy-looking members of the general population and provide data that is important in formulating the strategies for improving the management of a safe blood supply

Materials and methods

Results

Discussion