Publications by authors named "Marijke Weber-Schehl"
Article Synopsis
- Hepatitis B core antibody (anti-HBc) screening is used in blood establishments worldwide to help prevent the transmission of hepatitis B virus (HBV), especially from donors with occult HBV infection (OBI).
- A survey conducted revealed varied practices in HBV screening across 30 responses from 25 countries, with some establishments screening all donations for anti-HBc and HBV DNA, while others had different approaches, leading to inconsistencies in donor deferral strategies.
- The findings highlight the need for improved confirmation of anti-HBc results to minimize unnecessary donor deferrals while balancing the risk of transmission from anti-HBc negative OBI donors, particularly in high-endemic regions where sensitive HBV DNA testing is crucial.
Autochthonous human West Nile virus (WNV) infections were notified in the infectious disease surveillance system in Germany in 2018 for the first time and every year since then. Since clinically apparent infections are infrequent, we conducted two studies to investigate subclinical infections of this emerging disease in Germany in 2019 to detect infections not visible to surveillance based on symptomatic infections: limited-scope blood donor testing and a serosurvey among employees at two Berlin zoos with a history of demonstrated WNV infections in animals. For the zoo study, employees of the two zoos in Berlin were invited to participate in the study in late 2019.
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- Nucleic acid-amplification testing (NAT) is a method used to check blood donations for harmful viruses to keep people safe.
- In 2019, a global survey showed that countries mostly followed government rules for testing blood for viruses like HIV and hepatitis.
- The results indicated a trend towards using individual samples for testing instead of larger pools to improve safety in blood donations.
Article Synopsis
- The project reviewed the global use of nucleic acid amplification testing (NAT) in blood services to detect viral and parasite nucleic acids and reduce transfusion-related infections.
- A survey conducted among members of the International Society of Blood Transfusion revealed a significant increase in NAT adoption over the past decade, with data showing low but notable positivity rates for various viruses in blood donations.
- While NAT has enhanced blood transfusion safety worldwide, there is a call to address economic barriers that prevent some regions from implementing these important testing methods.
Introduction: is a tick-borne intraerythrocytic parasite that is globally ubiquitous, yet understudied. Several species of have been shown to be transfusion-transmissible. has been reported in blood donors, animals, and ticks in the Tyrol (Western Austria), and regional cases of human babesiosis have been described.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Blood product safety was significantly improved by the introduction of NAT testing in the late 1990s, resulting in a strong decrease of transfusion-transmitted infections (TTIs). Due to the occurrence of HIV-1 NAT test failures as a consequence of mismatch mutations in the amplicon regions of mono-target NAT assays, the Paul Ehrlich Institute mandated the implementation of multi-target NAT assays for HIV-1 in 2014. Commercial suppliers mostly developed dual-target NAT assays, with only one implementing a triple-target NAT assay.
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- Five cases of HIV-1 RNA-positive blood donations were undetected by three different nucleic acid amplification tests (NATs), leading to two HIV-1 transmissions to recipients.
- Investigations revealed that the false-negative results were due to mismatches between the viral variants and the NAT assay primers and probes used.
- The study suggests that dual-target NAT assays are more effective at detecting HIV-1 variants compared to monotarget assays, prompting consideration for their use in blood donation screening in Germany.
Background: The risk of transfusion-transmitted human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1), hepatitis C virus (HCV), and hepatitis B virus (HBV) infections is predominantly attributable to donations given during the early stage of infection when diagnostic tests may fail. In 1997, nucleic acid amplification technique (NAT)-testing was introduced at the German Red Cross (GRC) blood donor services to reduce this diagnostic window period (WP).
Study Design And Methods: A total of 31,524,571 blood donations collected from 1997 through 2005 were screened by minipool NAT, predominantly with pool sizes of 96 donations.