Improving blood donor screening by nucleic acid technology (NAT)

Abstract

The description of the ABO blood group system by Landsteiner and coworkers marked a sea change in making blood transfusions feasible and safe for a broad range of indications. Nevertheless, with an increase in blood transfusions, side‐effects such as transfusion‐transmitted infections (TTIs) became more and more important. A major challenge in transfusion medicine was (and is) to develop screening assays with maximum analytical sensitivity and analytical specificity to reduce the diagnostic window period as much as possible. Until the late 1990s, blood screening for TTIs depended entirely on serological assays. Except for HBV, where the virus can be detected using HBs‐antigen assays, tests for the detection of other TTIs relied almost exclusively on antibody detection. These tests, however, are associated with a relatively long diagnostic window period because they detect the response of the immune system to an infection.

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