Results of Reentry Test for the Deferred Donors after Non-Discriminated Reactive in Nucleic Acid Amplification Test

Shin, Sunmi; Kang, Jungwon; Lee, Kyeong Rak; Shin, Geon Sik; Kang, Jae won; Seo, Young Ik; Min, Hyukki

Abstract

BACKGROUND
Since December 15 2017, donors showing a non-discriminated reactive (NDR) result in the nucleic acid amplification test (NAT) have been temporarily deferred and anti-HBc and anti-HBs assays as additional tests were performed. Donors with an anti-HBc reactive result and less than 100 IU/L of anti-HBs could not be released and can request a reentry test after more than six months. This study considered the effects of additional tests for NDR donors by analyzing the reentry test results in donors not released in the additional test.
METHODS
This study examined the results of the additional test for NDR donors from January 2017 to September 2018 and the reentry test of the donors not released in the additional test.
RESULTS
NAT was conducted on 4,706,051 blood donors over the period and 2,545 (0.05%) of them showed NDR. A total of 656 (25.8%) of the NDR donors were not released in the additional test. Among them, 246 donors requested a reentry test; 222 (90.2%) donors were not reentered, and 23 (10.4%) showed HBV NAT reactive results in the reentry test. Among the remaining 24 reentered donors, 2 donors (8.3%) showed anti-HBc nonreactive results in the reentry test and 22 donors (91.7%) showed higher than 100 IU/L of anti-HBs.
CONCLUSION
The follow-up of NDR donors may be significant because some donors showed different results between screening test and reentry test. In addition the effectiveness of the introduction of additional tests for the NDR donors has been proved to be effective.