Use of blood-donor and transfusion-recipient biospecimen repositories to address emerging blood-safety concerns and advance infectious disease research: the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Biologic Specimen Repository.

摘要

In this issue of the Journal, a seminal article by Cannon et al. [1] addresses the long-standing debate over the transmissi-bility of human herpesvirus (HHV)-8, the etiological agent of Kaposi sarcoma (KS), via blood transfusion. Although concern over transmission via transfusion was raised shortly after the discovery of HHV-8 nearly 2 decades ago, this issue has been difficult to resolve because of problems with the sensitivity, reliability, and throughput capacity of HHV-8 screening assays, particularly for healthy donors with latent infections, in whom antibody titers are low and viremia is generally undetectable [2]. Identifying appropriate populations in which to conduct large-scale linked donor-recipient transmission studies has also been a challenge.