Insights

With the outbreak of COVID-19 maintaining adequate inventory levels for platelet concentrates may be even more challenging than ever.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), in co-operation with the Italian National Blood Centre, organized an expert consultation meeting (April 2019) to discuss the potential role of pathogen inactivation technologies (PI) as a blood safety intervention during outbreaks of infectious diseases for which (in most cases) laboratory screening of blood donations is not...

Pathogen inactivation of platelet concentrates (PC) with the INTERCEPT^TM Blood System has been universally implemented in metropolitan France from November 2017 onwards. Previously INTERCEPT had been deployed since 2006 in Alsace and in the French overseas departments.

The West Nile virus (WNV) is an enveloped RNA virus, well-known since 1937. Originally from Africa, it has now reached temperate climate zones. The virus mainly infects birds, but can also be transmitted to humans by mosquitoes – or by contaminated blood products!

In France, since 2010, the risk of HIV transmission by transfusion is reduced by the use of individual NAT.

Despite this testing approach, a false negative test result was obtained from a 57-year-old male repeat donor in March 2017, using the ProcleixUltrio assay. A repository sample from that donation tested positive with the Cobas Taqman HIV-1 (limit of detection at 95%, 17 copies/mL).