Prevalence of transfusion-transmitted infections in hospitalized patients before transfusion and volunteer blood donors in Zhejiang Province, China

OBJECTIVES

To assess the need for screening of transfusion-transmitted infections (TTIs) in blood products, we assessed TTI seroprevalence in blood donors and hospitalized patients.

METHODS

We collected 2760 serum samples from three regions of Hangzhou, Ningbo and Huzhou from April 2021 to March 2022, and they tested by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), Hepatitis C (HCV), Treponema pallidum (TP), Cytomegalovirus (CMV), Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), Hepatitis E virus (HEV) and Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1/2 (HTLV-1/2) antibody levels.

RESULTS

Screening test results showed that the positive rates for HBsAg, anti-HCV and anti-TP were 3.01 %, 0.39 % and 0.18 %, respectively. The positive rates for CMV IgM and CMV IgG were 0.76 % and 96.96 %, while the positive rates for EB VCA-IgM and EB EA-IgG were 1.88 % and 10.47 %; those for HEV IgM and HEV IgG were 1.16 % and 26.05 %, while the HTLV-1/2 antibody positive rate was 0.04 %. The positive rates for CMV IgG, EB EA-IgG and HEV IgG in hospitalized patients before transfusion were higher than in volunteer blood donors, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). The overall co-infection rate was 0.29 %. The positive rates for EB VCA-IgM in the males were significantly higher than in females, and EB VCA-IgM and HEV IgG prevalence varied significantly by age.

CONCLUSION

Our data demonstrate the risk of TTI exposure and TTI transmission in the Zhejiang population, which poses a threat to blood safety. It is hoped that expansion of pathogen categories (CMV, EBV, HEV and HTLV-1/2) and blood screening programs will contribute to the future adoption of scientific blood transfusion methods.

Model TJ-IV computer-assisted vectorcardiogram analysis system

During last 16 years we have successfully developed the computer-assisted vectorcardiogram analysis systems: model TJ-I, TJ-II, and TJ-III, but some technical problems remained unresolved, such as the recognition accuracy for vectorcardiograms, measurement of the parameters of complicated QRS waves, the ratio of T loop length to width, and the area of spatial vectors etc. A new system, model TJ-IV was designed to resolve these technical problems. The system was equipped with a 586 computer with a CPU of 120 MHz. Special new low-noise amplifier was employed and C language was used for programming. Three graph recognition techniques were used to enhance the accuracy of VCG recognition. 32 orthogonal electrocardiograms and vectorcardiograms were displayed and printed, and 566 parameters of vectorcardiograms were calculated. Our results with 150 cases showed that the system had high accuracy of graph recognition, and parameter calculation and the results were essentially consistent with those of manipulative methods. We were led to concluded when compared with TJ-III system, the new version has higher accuracy of processing and measurement for vectorcardiograms, is able to process more vectorcardiographic parameters, with higher processing speed.