Safety of Blood Products Derived from Plasma Pools: The Positive Impact of Anti‐HCV Screening on the Quality of Such Products

Anti‐HCV screening of volunteer blood donors was introduced by the Red Cross Blood Service of Baden‐Württemberg (over 400,000 donations/year) in June 1990. At that time, donors were tested with a first‐generation screening test, which was able to detect antibodies to a single recombinant HCV antigen: c100‐3. Test performance was neither very sensitive nor specific [ 1 ]. The anti‐HCV prevalence observed then was 0.53%. The second generation of screening tests relied on the detection of antibodies to three HCV recombinant antigens c100‐3, c22‐3 and c33c showing improved sensitivity and specificity [2]. It was implemented in Baden‐Württemberg in November of 1991. Anti‐HCV prevalence reached 0.47% after the implementation of this test. Finally, since June 1994 all blood donations are screened with the third generation of antibody tests, which includes the recombinant antigen NS5 and some biochemical modifications on the c33c antigen. The present anti‐HCV prevalence in this population is 0.23%.