[Selection of methods for HIV screening of donors' sera and blood products]

Blood and blood products are very important agents of HIV transmission. In this paper, 11,251 samples from 10,422 donors' sera and 150 blood products were screened for anti-HIV by ELISA, PA, IF and WB. The results were all negative. The donors lived in the 10 municipalities and counties of Sichuan Province. We also performed a prospective investigation to learn if these four methods were suitable to different blood products. We found that positive or weak positive reactions of ten occurred when gamma-globulins were detected by IF and ELISA, but the results were negative when gamma-globulins were tested by PA and WB. As a screening assay for anti-HIV, PA is most suitable for gamma-globulin. WB assay is the optimal method for anti-HIV testing in terms of both specificity and sensitivity. However, because the necessary reagents are very expensive and the procedure is time-consuming, we suggest that the WB assay may be used as a confirmatory test for anti-HIV assay in countries and regions where its general use is cost-prohibitive.