BACKGROUND Hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection has become relevant to blood transfusion practice because isolated cases of blood transmission have been reported and because HEV has been found to cause chronic infection and severe liver disease in immunocompromised patients. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS We tested for immunoglobulin (Ig)G and IgM antibodies to the HEV and for HEV RNA in 1939 unselect...

BACKGROUND Transfusion Transmissible Infections (TTIs) such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), syphilis, hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) are infections which are common in some communities in Southern Africa. It is important to screen blood donations for these infections. METHODS This is a retrospective study which involved reviewing of previous blood donation records ...

A total of 70 224 blood donations were tested at three Scottish blood transfusion centres for hepatitis B surface antigen /HBsAg) by an economical haemagglutination-inhibition method (E.H.A.I.) and the results compared with those of counterelectrophoresis (C.E.P.). A further 4086 donations were tested using the Wellcome turkey cell haemagglutination test, C.E.P., and E.H.A.I.E.H.A.I. was also c...

Over the past 20 years, there has been a major increase in the safety of the blood supply, as demonstrated by declining rates of posttransfusion infection and reductions in estimated residual risk for such infections. Reliable estimates of residual risk have been possible within the American Red Cross system because of the availability of a large amount of reliable and consistent data on donati...

Asymmetric frontal brain activity has been widely implicated in reactions to emotional stimuli and is thought to reflect individual differences in approach-withdrawal motivation. Here, we investigate whether asymmetric frontal activity, as a measure of approach-withdrawal motivation, also predicts charitable donations after a charity's (emotion-eliciting) promotional video showing a child in ne...

We experimentally study the effect of alternative campaign finance systems – as characterized by different information structure about donors – on donations, election outcomes, political candidates' policy choices, and welfare. Three alternative campaign finance systems are considered: a full anonymity (FA) system in which neither the politicians nor the voters are informed about the donors' id...

Background and Aims: This study was the trends of Hepatitis B infection among Iranian blood donors which was analyzed in a period of 10 years. Materials and Methods: In a period of 10 years, from 2001 through 2010, a total of 16,264,830 donations from 30 regional and 35 local blood services were screened. All blood samples were tested for Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBs Ag) by commercial avail...