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).

This is the first case in France of a false negative transfusion of HIV-infected blood donated during HIV pre-ramp-up phase.

HIV transmission from the platelet transfusions was excluded by lookback studies in the recipients. The absence of transmission to the platelet recipients could be due to the very low viral inoculum and/or to the efficacy of the INTERCEPT™ Pathogen Inactivation method used.

In conclusion, this case demonstrates that there is a real risk of contaminated donations since the early HIV phanse can go undetected even by highly sensitive NAT.

Reference:
Transfusion. 2019 Jun;59(6):2046-2053. doi: 10.1111/trf.15203. Epub 2019 Feb 19