Laboratory Diagnosis of Infectious Diseases 2019 A new issue of abstract journal Laboratory Diagnostics of Infectious Diseases (No. 1(19)-2019) is devoted to the topical issues of ensuring infectious safety of donor blood and its components.
In the digests of national and foreign researchers much attention is given to the various aspects of laboratory screening of donations for the markers of the most significant blood-borne infections such as HIV, hepatitis B and C, to the analysis of the possible causes of non-detection of these infections when testing donor blood, including the window period at early stages of HIV, HBV, HCV, viral heterogeneity, occult hepatitis B and C and challenges of their laboratory diagnosis, the existence of the so-called escape HBV mutant variants, chronic immunoreactivity and others.
The journal has a focus on the risk of transfusion-related transmission of HEV infection. It provides data on the incidence and prevalence of anti-HBE among blood donors in different countries and in some subjects of the Russian Federation; shows results of inter-laboratory comparison using the diagnostic assays of different manufacturers, covers causes of different performance of commercial diagnostics and assesses their significance for healthcare practices.
The journal also contains a review of publications related to the characteristics of some new and emerging infectious agents that can be transmitted with donor blood and its components, and several epidemiological aspects and peculiarities of their detection by laboratory methods.
The importance of the subject matter is also highlighted in the section devoted to the international and national requirements for the viral safety of donor blood. It points out most important aspects of the national policy of most countries, international regulations and guidelines; it stipulates main requirements for the laboratory methods and characteristics of the assays used for donor blood screening for transfusion-related infections.
The journal provides the basics of blood donation law with a focus on the obligatory screening of all donations for the common and dangerous transfusion-related infections; it is noted that the implementation of national regulating requirements for technical characteristics of blood screening diagnostics is needed.
We hope that the articles published in the journal will attract attention and arouse interest of a broader audience, will be useful for the blood service workers, clinicians and academic staff.