Inactivation of viruses and safety of stable plasma products

The safety of blood or plasma derived products with respect to the transmission of viruses has various aspects, one of them being the methods that may be used for inactivating viruses during processing of plasma products. In industry, the most important methods are heating in solution (pasteurization) or in the lyophilized state and treatment with solvents and detergents (S/D treatment). Both S/D treatment and pasteurization produce safe products. However, ethanol fractionation by itself may result in virus-safe preparations, since this procedure chemically inactivates viruses and also partitions viruses away from fractions that are subsequently used therapeutically.