Laptop Battery A new test has detected the West Nile virus in more than 600 blood donors across the country this summer, preventing transfusions of the contaminated blood, federal health officials said yesterday.
For the past 25 years, the public has been far more concerned with blood safety than blood supply, tainted blood infecting more than 12, 000 patients nationwide. Today, though, a battery of tests screen blood for HIV, hepatitis, West Nile virus, and other pathogens. A series of questions excludes donors who have visited countries with malaria or mad cow disease.
Thinkpad The figure may rise because infections from the virus, a mosquito-borne disease, continue, although the season appears to have passed its peak, the officials said.
As with other blood typing tests, the ALBAclone Blood Grouping Reagents will determine the blood type of donors, the key in making sure that a blood transfusion is carried out successfully. In addition to the common ABO and Rh tests, the blood grouping reagents will also be used to test for rare blood types. The reagents used in the blood typing are monoclonal antibodies, the FDA said, and it is the highly specific nature of them that "ensures product uniformity and availability."
Microsoft There is no way to be sure precisely how many West Nile cases were prevented by the test to screen donations, because scientists do not know what proportion of the recipients of the contaminated blood became ill, the officials said.
. (AXcess News) Reports of West Nilevirus are rising on the West Coast even though fall's cooler weather is dampening the reproduction of mosquitos there. San Francisco reported its third case of West Nile virus today. aged man tested positive for West Nile virus but that he was recovering at his home. The other two who contracted West Nile virus, aged man and woman, were likely to have contracted West Nile virus from visits to the Sacramento area, health officials said.
Laptop Computers Because each unit of donated blood is broken into components and transfused into about two patients on average and the percentage of patients who have received contaminated blood is very high, the screening tests seem to have prevented a significant amount of illness, the officials said.
West Nile virus has reached Cumberland County for the first time this year, the state Department of Health and Senior Services reported Monday. State Health Department testing revealed that a dead crow recovered at an unspecified location in the county was carrying the encephalitis virus. So far this year, 341 crows have tested positive for the disease in New Jersey, including four in Cape May County, and one each in Atlantic and Ocean counties. Also, the state has found the virus in mosquito pools from Atlantic, Burlington and Cape May counties, among others.
Laptop Computer "We can presume that we've prevented a very large number of infections and some significant amount of clinical disease," Dr. Jesse Goodman, an official of the Food and Drug Administration in Washington, said.
In a laboratory test, the researchers injected 12 monkeys with the combined virus vaccine and injected eight other monkeys with either the West Nile virus or the dengue virus. Six weeks later, all 20 monkeys were injected with West Nile virus. The dozen that received the combined virus vaccine developed antibodies that successfully protected the animals from the West Nile virus. Human clinical trials with the vaccine are to begin this year, Dr. Brian Murphy, a researcher in NIAID's Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, said Monday.
Desktop Computer Two patients who received transfusions did contract West Nile encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, this summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said. In one case, the tests failed to detect the virus. Officials said they were not certain how the other case occurred.
Notebooks The director of the centers, Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, said in a news conference yesterday that although the new test was "a major step forward in protecting the nation's blood supply," the two cases that slipped through the system showed that "it's not perfect."
Lenovo Dr. Gerberding cautioned doctors to consider West Nile fever in patients who experienced headaches and fevers after transfusions.
Hard Drive The first West Nile case in the Western Hemisphere was detected in 1999, in New York City. Critics say federal officials and infectious disease experts were complacent about the possibility that the virus could be transmitted through transfusions.
Travelstar Last year, 23 patients acquired West Nile through transfusions, researchers from the federal government and the Michigan Department of Community Health and the American Red Cross reported in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Gateway After transfusion-associated cases of West Nile were first identified last year, federal officials said they realized the need for a test to screen the blood. Blood banks asked donors about symptoms of recent illnesses. But the West Nile virus can be present in blood before symptoms develop or even among people who report few, if any, symptoms.
Laptop Parts The F.D.A., blood banks and the biotechnology industry collaborated to develop a test that has been used in blood banks since late June.
Software The test detects the genetic signature of the virus. But because its development was rushed, manufacturers could not produce enough so that blood banks could use it to test each unit of donor blood, Dr. Gerberding said.
Hard Drives So blood banks generally take a sample of the blood from each donor, mix it with blood from 6 to 16 other donors and test the pooled sample. If the test indicates the presence of virus, blood banks then test each donor's blood.
Electronics But in some areas where West Nile is particularly prevalent this summer, blood banks are testing each donor's blood. Those states include Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota, Dr. Gerberding said.
Canon The test, which also helps doctors diagnose West Nile fever, has led to more milder cases being reported than in the past, Dr. Gerberding said. But, she also said, more cases of encephalitis are being reported this summer.
Desktop Pc This year, 4,137 human cases of West Nile fever have been reported nationwide. Colorado has reported the most cases, 1,542, followed by South Dakota, 580; Nebraska, 554; Wyoming, 282; and Texas, 276.
Desktop Computers By Lawrence K. Altman
New York Times - 9/19/2003
Topic: Pesticides
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