title: What do western blot indeterminate patterns for human immunodeficiency virus mean in EIA-negative blood donors?
abstract: To investigate the specificity of western blot indeterminate (WBi) patterns for antibodies to the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), 100 enzyme immunoassay (EIA) negative donors from whom prospectively obtained recipient sera were available were tested by WB. 20 were WBi, with p24 being the predominant (70%) and generally the only band. Among recipients of WBi blood, 36% were WBi in their 6 month post-transfusion sample, but so were 42% of a control population that had received only WB-negative blood. When serial samples from recipients with a WBi pattern were tested on two occasions, only 35% of results were reproducible. No reciepient of WBi blood became EIA positive, true positive for WB, positive for HIV-1 antigen, or positive for EIA reactivity against recombinant p24 or gp41. The polymerase chain reaction was negative for gag and env HIV-1 sequences in all donors and recipients. Thus WBi patterns are exceedingly common in randomly selected donors and recipients and such patterns do not correlate with the presence of HIV-1 or the transmission of HIV-1 from donor to recipient.
authors.affiliation: Department of Transfusion Medicine, Warren G. Magnuson Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Genesca
authors.forename: J W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Shih
authors.forename: B W
authors.initials: BW
authors.lastname: Jett
authors.forename: I K
authors.initials: IK
authors.lastname: Hewlett
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Epstein
authors.forename: H J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Alter
mesh_terms: D001782:Blood Donors; D015153:Blotting, Western / Q000592:standards*; D004259:DNA-Directed DNA Polymerase; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005189:False Positive Reactions; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D015683:Gene Products, gag / Q000032:analysis; D015483:HIV Antibodies / Q000032:analysis*; D016655:HIV Core Protein p24; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000276:immunology*; D006801:Humans; D007124:Immunoenzyme Techniques; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012494:Sampling Studies; D014758:Viral Core Proteins / Q000032:analysis
chemical_list: D015683:Gene Products, gag; D015483:HIV Antibodies; D016655:HIV Core Protein p24; D014758:Viral Core Proteins; D004259:DNA-Directed DNA Polymerase