The Prevalence of Yersinia Yop-Specific Iga Antibodies in Iranian Healthy Blood Donors and Evaluation of Blood Culture of Seropositive Donors

In this study, we report the prevalence of Yesinia Yop-specific IgA antibodies in Iranian healthy blood donors. To our knowledge, this report is the first of its kind from Iran. Yersinia enterocolitica is an animal bacterial species that led to foodtransmitted infections(1) and is major cause of septicemia after transfusion of blood products (2, 3). Mortality rate has been reported 59% in blood recipients (4-6). For serologic diagnosis of Y. enterocolitica, the agglutination IgG and IgM antibody against H and O antigens are used. But the disadvantage of agglutination test is cross reactivity with other antibodies(5). Y. enterocolitica infection from transfusion can be prevented by rejection of donors which has the history of gastrointestinal infection or contact with infected person, and storing of blood in room temperature at least 2 h before plasma separation; although cannot absolutely prevent transfusion Y. enterocolitica infection, additionally an estimated 3%-5% rate of donor deferral (7). In this study, sera from 492 healthy blood donors in Tehran Blood Center were obtained for detection of Yersinia anti-Yop IgA antibodies (MICROGEN, Munich, Germany) by two different techniques; enzyme immunoassay (EIA) and western blot. We then cultured the RBCs of Yesinia sero positive donors stored in 1-6 °C for 35 days. Finally, we evaluated the association between seropositivity and blood culture results. 12.5% (62 out of 492 healthy blood donors) were seropositive with anti-YOP IgA ELISA. In immunoblotting analysis with recomline IgA, 8.5% of seropositive blood donors were positive (Table 1). The high seropositivity in population showed that the prevalence of Yersinia infection was high, but the severity of infection was mild.