Co-infection of blood borne viruses in blood donors: A cross-sectional study from North India.
BACKGROUND
There are several studies on prevalence of individual infectious disease markers (mono-infection) in donors but none on prevalence of coinfection. Co-infection is significant as it leads to accelerated disease progression. We, therefore, evaluated the prevalence of co-infection among blood donors.


METHODS
The cross-sectional analysis was conducted in blood donors. All donors were tested for anti-HIV I and II, HBsAg, anti-HBC IgM, anti-HCV, Malaria and syphilis by chemiluminescence and ID-NAT assay. All reactive donor samples were confirmed by using confirmatory assays. Donors were grouped as mono-infected and co-infected. The student t-test was used for comparison.


RESULTS
During the study period, a total of 106,238 blood donors were tested. Mean age of donors was 34.2 years and 94.2% of blood donors were males. 1776 (1.67%) donor samples were confirmed serologically reactive. 1714 (1.61%) samples were reactive for single marker (mono-infected) while 62 (0.05%) donors' samples exhibited co-infection. 18 donors were positive for HBV+HCV followed by HIV +syphilis (14).


CONCLUSIONS
We report for the first time the prevalence of different co-infection patterns in blood donors. Co-infection influence the disease progression; it would be important to investigate the co-infection prevalence in larger sample size.
Department of Transfusion Medicine, Medanta-The Medicity, Sector-38, Gurgaon 122001, India. Electronic address: rcdara@gmail.com.
Ravi C
RC
Dara
Department of Transfusion Medicine, Medanta-The Medicity, Sector-38, Gurgaon 122001, India. Electronic address: aseemtwr@yahoo.co.in.
Aseem K
AK
Tiwari
Department of Transfusion Medicine, Medanta-The Medicity, Sector-38, Gurgaon 122001, India. Electronic address: dinesh.arora@medanta.org.
Dinesh
D
Arora
Department of Transfusion Medicine, Medanta-The Medicity, Sector-38, Gurgaon 122001, India. Electronic address: geetaggarwal2000@yahoo.co.in.
Geet
G
Aggarwal
Department of Transfusion Medicine, Medanta-The Medicity, Sector-38, Gurgaon 122001, India. Electronic address: gsrawat47@rediffmail.com.
Ganesh Singh
GS
Rawat
Department of Transfusion Medicine, Medanta-The Medicity, Sector-38, Gurgaon 122001, India. Electronic address: jyoti.sharma2@medanta.org.
Jyoti
J
Sharma
Department of Transfusion Medicine, Medanta-The Medicity, Sector-38, Gurgaon 122001, India. Electronic address: acharyadevi001@gmail.com.
Devi Prasad
DP
Acharya
Department of Transfusion Medicine, Medanta-The Medicity, Sector-38, Gurgaon 122001, India. Electronic address: drgunjanbhardwaj@gmail.com.
Gunjan
G
Bhardwaj
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001782:Blood Donors; D060085:Coinfection; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006509:Hepatitis B / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006526:Hepatitis C / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D055815:Young Adult
Blood donors; Co-infection; Hepatitis B; Hepatitis C; Human immunodeficiency virus