0000000001229009
AUTHOR
Lutz G Prof Dr Guertler
Pathogen safety of long-term treatments for bleeding disorders: (un)predictable risks and evolving threats.
Substantial improvements in the safety of blood and plasma products for the management of bleeding disorders have been achieved in recent decades. This has led some clinicians to believe that the infectious threat is over and that inhibitor formation is the foremost complication of hemophilia therapy. On the contrary, elimination of all microbes from blood is difficult, potentially impossible, and there are always threats from emerging pathogens. The risk of infection transmission is also increasing due to greater exposure to products, increasing prophylaxis and high-dose regimens for immune tolerance, and longevity of hemophilia patients. Current products can be considered "reasonably safe…
Current concepts in the prevention of pathogen transmission via blood/plasma-derived products for bleeding disorders
The pathogen safety of blood/plasma-derived products has historically been a subject of significant concern to the medical community, Measures such as donor selection and blood screening have contributed to increase the safety of these products, but pathogen transmission does still occur. Reasons for this include lack of sensitivity/specificity of current screening methods, lack of reliable screening tests for some pathogens (e.g. prions) and the fact that many potentially harmful infectious agents are not routinely screened for. Methods for the purification/inactivation of blood/plasma-derived products have been developed in order to further reduce the residual risk, but low concentrations…