Report on pilot project for blood safety submitted

Individual nucleic acid testing

May 16, 2016 12:00 am | Updated 05:47 am IST - CHENNAI:

In February this year, the blood bank at Government Stanley Hospital conducted a pilot project — individual nucleic acid testing (ID-NAT) of blood samples — to determine the feasibility of bringing this testing standard into the government sector, said N. Rajakumar, head, transfusion medicine, Government Stanley Hospital.

“A total of 5,000 samples were tested both by ID-NAT and by the usual ELISA tests. We found that ID-NAT helped narrow the window period of infections and picked up more infections than the ELISA tests,” he said.

‘More testing units needed’

A report on this has been submitted to the government, said Dr. Rajakumar, proposing the establishment of more testing units at the hospital and for blood across the State to be tested there before it is used in the banks.

In government hospitals alone, Chennai requires about one lakh units of blood per year, said Dr. Rajakumar. Most of the blood is obtained through voluntary donations.

When an individual decides to donate blood, they are first screened by a counsellor. After the donation, the blood is tested for malarial parasites, venereal diseases, Hepatitis B and C and HIV before it goes into a blood bank. What ID-NAT will do, said Dr. Rajakumar, is provide an additional layer of safety.

NAT is one of the most sensitive forms of blood testing available, said Saranya Narayan, medical director, Jeevan Blood Bank. “It tests for the presence of circulating DNA or RNA of the virus as opposed to screening for antigens or antibodies. It helps narrow the window periods of viruses such as Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV. An alternative to ID-NAT testing is the fourth-generation ELISA test, which screens for both antigens and antibodies and is considerably cheaper than ID-NAT,” she said.

B.K. Madhan Kumar, consultant, transfusion medicine, SRM Institutes for Medical Science, said the hospital had tested close to 3,000 samples with ID-NAT over the last 10 months. “Apart from narrowing the window period of infections, it has helped reduce false positives too. We are now also using ID-NAT to test the blood of patients, especially those on dialysis, to help prevent infections,” he said. But most of all, said Dr. Narayan, blood safety starts with a safe blood donor.

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