Prescription Medications - U

Keeping Organ, Tissue Transplants Safe

Checking for the presence of blood antibodies to these viral diseases is the conventional way of determining whether a person is a safe tissue or organ donor. But this method has drawbacks. For example, some infected donors may not be seroconverted -- even though they're infected, they don't yet show a full immune response to viral infection by producing antibodies.

In this study, French researchers examined whether nucleic acid testing (NAT) could detect HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) RNA. The study included 2,236 organ donors, 636 tissue donors, and 177 cornea donors.

Using NAT, the researchers identified five HCV RNA-positive donors in 2,119 HCV-seronegative organ donors and one HCV RNA-positive donor in 631 HCV-seronegative tissue donors. They did not find any HIV RNA-positive donors.