Minimal Residual Risk for HIV, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C from Blood Products Based on screening results of over 58 million blood donations from the American Red Cross from more than 14.7 million… February 28, 2020
New Draft Guidance Recommendations from the FDA to Reduce Risk of Transfusion-Transmitted Creutzfeldt-Jakob Diseases Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) is a fatal, rare neurological disease caused by infectious prions, or abnormally folded proteins. Sporadic CJD accounts… February 5, 2020
World on Heightened Alert for Novel Coronavirus Coronaviruses are a large family of enveloped RNA zoonotic viruses. The emerging novel coronavirus from Wuhan, China that was first… January 28, 2020
New Ebola Treatment Options Available The current outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) which began in August 2018 in North Kivu and Ituri provinces of… December 3, 2019
WHO Declares Ebola Outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo an International Emergency The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo… July 25, 2019
Bacterial sepsis among transfusion recipients despite secondary mitigation strategies Bacterial contamination of platelet products is the most common transfusion-transmitted infection in the United States (U.S.). To mitigate this risk,… June 28, 2019
New FDA Recommendations for Babesiosis Screening of Blood Donations Babesiosis, caused by a tick-borne intra-erythrocytic parasite, is normally asymptomatic in humans but can cause severe and even deadly flu-like… May 16, 2019
The BEST Criteria to Decide Whether or Not to Culture Suspected Blood Components Life-threatening septic transfusion reactions (STR) can occur when blood components are contaminated with bacteria. Definitive diagnosis of STR, however, may… May 8, 2019
Chagas Disease Screening for Family Members of Positive Blood Donors Chagas disease (CD) is a zoonotic infection caused by blood sucking Trypanosoma cruzi—a parasite that infects over 6 million people… April 10, 2019
Babesia and Bacterial Contamination Most Frequent Transfusion-Transmitted Infections Based on hemovigilance data from the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), viral transfusion-transmitted infections (TTI) are rare while bacterial contamination… January 30, 2019