View article

BACKGROUND:  Estimates for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)‐1 and hepatitis C virus (HCV) transfusion‐transmitted risks have relied on incidence derived from repeat donor histories and imprecise estimates for infectious, preseroconversion window periods (WPs).

STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS:  By use of novel approaches, WPs were estimated by back‐extrapolation of acute viral replication dynamics. Incidence was derived from the yield of viremic, antibody‐negative donations detected by routine minipool nucleic acid testing (MP‐NAT) of 37 million US donations (1999‐2002) or from sensitive/less‐sensitive HIV‐1 enzyme immunoassay (S/LS‐EIA) results for seropositive samples from 6.5 million donations (1999). Incidences and WPs were combined to calculate risks and project yield of individual donation (ID)‐NAT.

RESULTS:  The HIV‐1 WP from presumed infectivity (1 copy/20 mL) to ID‐NAT …