title: International forum: Saudi Arabia. Donor screening for HTLV-I in Saudi Arabia: is it cost effective?
abstract: After screening over 100,000 blood donations for the presence of anti-HTLV-I antibodies, a final prevalence of 0.0038% was established in a multinational donor population. Among 38,201 donations by Saudi Arabian donors, the prevalence was found to be 0.0052%. Fifty-eight donors were found to be repeat reactive in the EIA screen test, but only 6.9% of these (n = 4) were truly infected with HTLV-I as judged by the Western blot result. These results indicate that Saudi Arabia is non-endemic for HTLV-I as well as HTLV-II. The cost effectiveness of screening for HTLV-I in healthy blood donors from this area is highly questionable. Calculations point to a final risk of a case of post-transfusion HTLV-I associated disease of approximately one per 100 years at the current level of activity.
authors.affiliation: Dept of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, King Faisal Spec. Hospital and Research Centre, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: S S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Bernvil
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Andrews
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Coulter
mesh_terms: D001782:Blood Donors; D015490:HTLV-I Infections / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D015368:Human T-lymphotropic virus 1 / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D006801:Humans; D008403:Mass Screening; D012529:Saudi Arabia / Q000453:epidemiology; D065227:Transfusion Reaction