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Indian Journal of Medical Sciences, Vol. 58, No. 6, June, 2004, pp. 255-257 Letter To Editor Seroprevalence of HIV, HBV, HCV and syphilis in voluntary blood donors Gupta Nalini , Kumar Vijay , Kaur Amarjit House no- 2935, Sector 37-C, Chandigarh-160023 Code Number: ms04048 Sir, Screening of blood is now mandatory for many diseases and is undertaken routinely in blood banks. Many studies have been done on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), syphillis, Australia antigen (HBsAg), hepatiis C virus (HCV) separately, but the knowledge about the interrelationship between these transfusion transmitted diseases (TTD′s) is limited, the present study was undertaken to find out the prevalence and correlation between various infectious markers in healthy blood donors. A total of 44064 blood units collected in department of transfusion medicine, Dayanand Medical College & Hospital, Ludhiana, during the period of January 2001 to October 2003 were studied. No professional or honorary donor was bled. Screening of all the blood units for anti HIV-1/2, HBsAg, anti HBc, anti HCV & syphillis was done by a fully Automated Microplate Elisa Processor (ARIO model) from SEAC RADIM group using commercially available kits. Any serum found reactive by the first assay was retested using a second assay based on a different antigen preparation and/or different test principle. HIV seropositivity was seen to be 37/44064 (0.084%) and few of these were also confirmed by western blot test. HBsAg sropositivity was 290/44064 (0.66%), anti HBc positivity was 49/44064 (0.11%), anti HCV positivity was found to be 483/44064 (1.09%) and syphillis positivity was found to be 373/44064 (0.85%) as shown in [Table - 1]. Also a definite correlation between positivity of HIV & syphilis was observed, but no correlation was seen between HIV and HBsAg/anti HBc/anti HCV positivity. The positivity of anti HBc was found to be more than positivity of HBsAg suggesting the ability to detect Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in window period. Otuonye et al[1] observed that amongst the 150 (21.5%) patients positive with sexually transmitted diseases, 82 (54.65%) were found to be positive for HIV antibodies. Patil et al[2] also observed a positive correlation between HIV & VDRL positivity. Therefore, serological screening for syphillis serves as a surrogate test for HIV infected donors. Jain et al[3] and Gosavi et al[4] found prevalence of anti HCV 1.57% in New Delhi and 15.9% in Mumbai, respectively. Risbud[5] found that there was lack of evidence for sexual transmission of hepatitis C virus in patients attending STD clinics in Pune, India. Kothari[6] observed that out of a total of 200 blood donors, 3% were positive for HBsAg, 1% for HIV, 2% for HCV and 4.5% for syphilis. So, taking into consideration rising prevalence of these infectious markers, a routine screening of all the donated blood units for anti HIV-1/2, HBsAg, anti HBc, anti HCV and syphillis should be done, which will assist blood transfusion services in improving blood product safety and donor recalls. REFERENCES
Copyright 2004 - Indian Journal of Medical Sciences The following images related to this document are available:Photo images[ms04048t1.jpg] |
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