Lifelines (Summer 2000) - BCP - Leading the Way in Transfusion Safety Research

BCP - Leading the Way in Transfusion Safety Research

April 2000 marked the launch of BCP’s Scientific Services participation in what some are calling the most important transfusion safety related research study of the decade. This study, which is part of the government funded Retrovirus Epidemiology Donor Study (REDS), is called the REDS Allogeneic Donor and Recipient Repository (more commonly known as “RADAR”). In addition to BCP, six other large blood centers from areas around the United States will be participating in the study.

The RADAR study involves blood donors as well as the recipients of their blood. Samples from blood donors consenting to the study will be frozen and stored in a repository and the donated blood will be tagged and targeted for transfusion to patients scheduled for heart or orthopedic surgeries. Pre and post transfusion samples from consenting recipients of “RADAR” blood will also be frozen and stored. All of this information will be linked in a very large database, allowing researchers to quickly answer future questions about the transmissibility of infectious agents via blood transfusion. A look at a relatively recent example may help shed some light on the potential importance and usefulness of this new repository.

In the mid-1980s, after laboratory tests for HIV became available, it took years of enormous effort to collect the data needed to understand the degree to which HIV was a problem for blood transfusion safety, as well as to decide what sorts of guidelines should be put in place to best protect the safety of blood transfusion recipients. Epidemiologists worked primarily with individual reports of patients who were found (after transfusion) to be infected with HIV and who had no risks for infection other than the blood transfusion. Many of these recipients received multiple transfusions of blood and blood products, sometimes amounting to hundreds of individual donations. In a process known as “Lookback,” records at hospitals and blood centers were painstakingly searched and donors of the transfused blood products were identified. These donors were individually contacted and if located, were screened for infection with HIV. Though “Lookback” eventually provided valuable data about HIV transmission via blood transfusion, it was a painfully slow, inefficient and time- consuming process.

With RADAR, blood centers in the United States will have the ability to react to a newly discovered infectious agent much more quickly and efficiently. As soon as a new and potentially transmissible agent is identified, hundreds of thousands of donation samples stored in the RADAR repository will be available for immediate screening. If any donation samples are identified as infected with the new agent, pre and post transfusion samples from recipients of the donated blood could then be tested for presence of the same infection. With the resources available through RADAR, transfusion safety related questions that took many years to answer during the HIV epidemic could be answered within months.

A RADAR staffer will be going out to various mobile and fixed site donation locations to recruit blood donors for this exciting new study. For donors, participation means reading and signing an additional consent form, which will allow BCP to freeze and store a sample from the donation for possible testing in the future.