Serologial Screening of Human T Cell Lymphotropic Virus I and II (HTLV I/II) in Blood Banks by Immunoblotting and Enzyme-immuno Assays: To Demand or to Defeat?

^1,3Maha I. Sh. Kawashti, ²S. I. Hindawi, ²G. A Damanhouri, ³Nadia G. Rowehy, ³Manal, M. Bawazeer and ⁴M. Alshawa

¹Microbiology & Immunology Department, Faculty of medicine (For Girls), Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt, ²Haematology & Transfusion Medicine Lab, King Abdul Aziz Hospital, Jeddah, ³Serology Department, King Fahad General Hospital (KFGH), Jeddah, and ⁴Blood Bank-KFGH, Jeddah, K.S.A.

Human T cell lymphotropic virus I and II (HTLV I/II) has been recommended to be screened for blood donors since 1988, and it become a mandatory test to get college of american Pathologists (CAP) accreditation. The present study aimed at investigating the prevalence rate of HTLV I/II among Arab blood donors, to revise whether is its screening mandatory? Thirty-thousand (30,000) Arab donors along two years attending two central hospital blood banks in Jeddah. Antibodies to HTLV I/II have been screened using enzyme immunoassay (E.I.A) and immunoblotting assay (Western blot). Results revealed zero prevalence rate. Based upon this finding, no potential risk of HTLV I/II transmission among blood donors population exist. As screening for HTLV I/II is still mandatory, it could be done on pools of sera rather than on individual serum samples, after standardization of a pooling protocol, to fulfill coast-effectiveness and reduce the coasts by 90-95%.