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Influence of donor age, sex and ethnicity on high-titre anti-A and -B: Review of 6 million donations from two national blood providers.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Repository DOI


Change log

Authors

Huish, Sian 
Griffiths, Alexandra 
Powley, Tanya 
Daly, James 

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Some blood operators routinely screen blood donations for high-titre (HT) anti-A/B to reduce the risk of a haemolytic transfusion reaction due to out-of-group plasma-rich components. We assessed donor factors associated with an increased likelihood of screening positive and compared routine data between England and Australia. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data were assessed from HT screening during 2018-2020 in Australia and 2018-2021 in England, totalling nearly 6 million blood donations. Screening was performed using a Beckman Coulter PK7300 analyser with a micro-titre plate saline direct agglutination test in both countries, although different reagent red cells were chosen. HT-positive was defined as testing positive at a titre of 128 or above. RESULTS: The likelihood of a donor testing HT-positive was greater for females than males, declined with age and was dependent on the ABO group. However, the proportion of donors testing HT-positive was consistently higher in Australia than in England: overall, 14% of group O donations and 5% of group A donations in England tested HT-positive, compared with 51% and 22%, respectively in Australia. English data also showed that donors from Black, Asian or mixed ethnic backgrounds were more likely to test HT-positive than White donors. CONCLUSION: These data demonstrate that donor sex, age, ABO group and ethnicity affect the likelihood of testing HT-positive. Differences in testing methods likely had a significant impact on the proportion of donors testing as HT-positive or -negative rather than any differences in donor populations.

Description

Publication status: Published


Funder: Australian Government; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100015539

Keywords

blood donations, donor testing, high‐titre (HT)‐positive

Journal Title

Vox Sang

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0042-9007
1423-0410

Volume Title

Publisher

Wiley
Sponsorship
NIHR (National Institute for Health Research) Invention for Innovation (II‐LA‐0417‐20003)