PREVALENCE OF HTLV-I II IN REPEAT BLOOD-D ONORS IN GERMANY/

Objective: The aim of the present study was to determine the prevalenc e of HTLV-I/II in blood donors in Germany, in order to estimate the ri sk of transmission with blood transfusions. Materials and Methods: We tested 43,185 blood donations of 11,303 repeat blood donors for anti-H TLV-I by enzymelinked immunosorbent assay (Abbott, HTLV-I-EIA), the wh ole samples of one year. Donors were evaluated for antibody specificit y using another ELISA (Pasteur, Platelia(R) HTLV-I New), a western blo t [Diag. Biotechnology (Ptc) Ltd., HTLV Blot 2.3], and PCR (Hoffmann-L a Roche, Amplicor(R) HTLV-I/II) as confirmatory tests. Results: All bl ood donors who were reactive in the HTLV-I-EIA have been classified in to four groups: test result positive, indeterminate, potentially seroc onverted, and different results for different samples. Only one female blood donor had a persistent HTLV-II infection. None of the blood don ors had an HTLV-I infection. Conclusion: The low prevalence of HTLV-I/ II of 0.01% does not justify the routine screening of blood donors for HTLV antibodies. On account of the increasing travels into endemic ar eas. epidemiologic studies on HTLV should be carried out regularly.