Arbovirus epidemics and blood safety in Brazil

Brazil has experienced successive outbreaks of dengue in the last three decades, with more than one million cases per year since 2014, as vector control has proven unsuccessful. In 2014, Chikungunya and Zika viruses were introduced to Brazil in different sites. Currently, all three agents are spread all over the country, posing a considerable burden to the health system. Transfusion‐transmitted cases of CHKV have never been reported while for Dengue, there are globally less than ten well‐documented clusters and recently two cases of TT ZIKV were published, both from Brazil. It is recognized that thousands of units from asymptomatic blood donors, carrying one of the three now endemic arboviruses, were and are transfused to recipients, but clinical overt disease is a rare finding. However, in centres assisting a significant number of hospitalized transfused recipients and where haemovigilance is implemented, TT dengue has been described, with associated morbidity. When the causal association of ZIKV to microcephaly was established, it became recommendable to provide ZIKV RNA‐tested blood to pregnant women and intrauterine recipients. Pathogen inactivation methods are still not ready for red cells, making them an incomplete alternative. Viral nucleic acid detection shall be implemented when licensed and automated systems become available. At the moment, in‐house real‐time PCR is being adopted by centres with trained personnel and methodology grasp. Intense research on ...
Source: ISBT Science Series - Category: Hematology Authors: Tags: Invited Review Source Type: research