European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Volunteers of Blood or who called donors are screened for hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection by ELISA in the National center of blood bank in Baghdad. The risk of enzyme immunoassay (EIA) negative samples is not estimated till now in Iraq. The aim of this study is to screen the seronegative plasma of blood donors by a commercially available multiplex NAT test with mini-pooling. One thousands (1000) blood donors plasmas were screened by EIA and then NAT was performed on pools of ten blood plasma. A total of 100 minipools donors plasmas were screened by NAT. Positive HBV NAT minipools of plasma were (3%), 3 HCV (3%), and 3 (3%) HIV minipools by NAT. Accordingly, the use of NAT was shown to detect occult HBV and reduce window period in HCV and HIV in sero-negative plasma from blood donors. Therefore, the implementation of NAT with mini-poling for routine blood donor screening will provide a safe and cost-effective mean of screening for blood transfusion in Iraq

Human herpesvirus type 8 (HHV-8) or known as Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus
(KSHV) is the etiologic agent for all clinic-epidemiological forms of Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS).
Many studies have been documented that blood transfusion plays an important role in
HHV-8 transmission. This study was prepared to determine the frequency of HHV-8
antibodies among blood donors. A cross-sectional study was conducted on ninety blood
donors who attended the Iraqi National Centre for Blood Transfusion in February 2019 to
detect HHV-8 IgG antibodies using an enzyme-linked immunoassay method. Anti-HHV8-
IgG were detected in 78 out of 90 (86.6%) serum samples. A significant association has
been found between anti-HHV-8 detection and associated risk factors in blood donors such
as sexual relationships (legal and illegal), occupation, surgical and dental operations, blood
transfusion, cupping, tattooing, smoking and numbers of blood donation. Our results
confirmed that a high percentage of HHV8-IgG among blood donors may indicate an
increased threat to HHV-8 infection via blood transfusion.