Nucleic Acid Amplification Testing (NAT): An Innovative Diagnostic Approach for Enhancing Blood Safety
2017
Manisha Shrivastava | Shweta Mishra
Though, blood transfusions have not been ever associated with zero risk, many patients need transfusions and the risk reduction through improvement in infectious disease screening is the need of the hour. Many centers have implemented Nucleic Acid Amplification Testing (NAT) for the purpose of blood safety, it is yet to be mandatory regulatory requirement in India. This review aims to provide an overview of the need for implementation of NAT as an innovative approach in blood banks for reducing the window period and identifying the true sero-prevalence and incidence of Transfusion Transmitted Infections (TTIs) (HBV, HIV and HCV). NAT is highly sensitive way to reduce the window period of HIV to 2.93 days, HBV to 10.34 days and HCV to 1.34 days and definitely improves the transfusion safety. For evidence based implementation of pooled or ID NAT large sample size studies based in India are needed. Cost effective adoption of NAT by single center testing in a referral laboratory would help reduce the disease burden in a society where early diagnosis and management would lead to overall health benefit to both donors and patients.
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