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Title: WEST NILE VIRUS IN BLOOD: STABILITY, DISTRIBUTION, AND SUSCEPTIBILITY TO PEN110 INACTIVATION

Author
item MATHER, THOMAS
item TAKEDA, TSUTOMU
item TASSELLO, JODIE
item OHAGEN, ASA
item SEREBRYANIK, DIANA
item KRAMER, EDWARD
item BROWN, FRED
item TESH, ROBERT
item ALFORD, BERNADETTE
item LAZO, AIRS

Submitted to: Transfusion
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/30/2002
Publication Date: 9/8/2003
Citation: JOURNAL SHOULD BE TRANSFUSION, VOLUME 43, AUGUST 2003, PAGE 1029

Interpretive Summary: The risk of transmission of blood-borne pathogens is a persistant problem in medicine, particularly in the transfusion of red blood cells. The recent important observation that West Nile virus (WNV) can be transmitted by transfusion provided an opportunity to determine whether an agiridine derivative, similar to that used for the preparation of FMD vaccines, would be useful for the sterilization of blood containing the WNV. The results show that the agiridine derivation inactivates the virus completely.

Technical Abstract: The outbreak of West Nile virus (WNV) is the most recent reminder that the blood supply continues to be vulnerable to emerging and reemerging pathogens. A potentially prospective approach to reducing the risk of transfusion-transmitted infections of a known or newly emerging microbe is implementation of a broad-spectrum pathogen reduction technology. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the susceptibility of WNV to PEN 110 inactivation in RBCs and to characterize the WNV interaction with blood, including the stability of WNV in RBCs stored at 1 to 6oC, its distribution and infectivity, and its ability to infect WBCs.