Feeling Positive?

Is a donor "reactive" for a particular infectious disease marker or is he "positive"? What does "repeat reactive" mean? Can you have a reactive test on a particular sample and still be categorized as "non-reactive"? When studying transfusion-transmitted diseases (podcast on this topic coming soon), you will read terminology that can sometimes be confusing to non-virologists of the world (I proudly include myself in that category!). This blog entry will discuss several confusing terms related to viral marker testing results.

Hepatitis C Testing

I recently received a question from a friend at a hospital-based donor center regarding re-entry testing for a donor that had a previous reactive test for Hepatitis C virus (HCV). The rules have recently changed regarding how to re-enter people in this situation, so it seemed like a good opportunity to write about the overall HCV testing strategy in U.S. donors, with an emphasis on those recent changes.