Occurrence of Transfusion Transmissible Infections in Screened Blood with Rapid Diagnostic Kits in Comparison with ELISA Using Federal Medical Centre Owo as A Case Study

¹ Department of Medical Laboratory Science, University of Benin, Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria

² Department of Medical Laboratory Science, Achievers University, Owo, Ondo State, Nigeria

^*Corresponding Author

A. D. Atere

Department of Medical Laboratory Science,

Achievers University, Owo

Nigeria

Email: ateread@gmail.com

Tel.: +2348039501172

Abstract

Transfusion medicine has a great public health importance worldwide because it has saved many lives. Every blood transfusion therefore carries a potential risk for transmissible diseases due to the lack of knowledge and unavailability of reference diagnostic techniques. The study is aimed at assessing the occurrence of transfusion transmissible infections in screened blood donors with rapid diagnostic kits in comparison with enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) as a reference method. This is a cross sectional study and it was carried out on fifty (50) apparently healthy individuals, whose ages ranged between 18–60 years, randomly recruited into this study from the Blood transfusion Unit, Federal Medical Centre, Owo. The blood of each donor was screened with rapid kits and ELISA for Hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), Human immune deficiency virus (HIV) and syphilis. Of the 9 samples that initially tested positive for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) with rapid screening kit, 22.22% tested negative with ELISA technique while out of 8 samples tested positive for VDRL, only one came out negative. The specificity and positive predictive value (PPV) for HBsAg and venereal disease research laboratory (VDRL) were (95.3%, 77.8%) and (97.7%, 87.5%) respectively while specificity and PPV for HIV and HCV were 100%. It is thus necessary for Nigerian government to develop a safe blood donor screening strategy to reduce transfusion-transmitted infections by combining the use of less sensitive rapid screening with more sensitive techniques.

Keywords:Transfusion transmissible infections, Sensitivity, Specificity, Blood donors

Download the full article (PDF)