Seroepidemiologic prevalence of HTLV in voluntary blood donors in Mashhad

Blood transfusion is one of the routes of Human T-Lymphotropic virus (HTLV1/2) transmission. Considering that Mashhad (located in Khorasan province) is one of the areas where the virus is endemic, it seems necessary to investigate its prevalence on Mashhad blood donors. In this descriptive study, all eligible blood donors who were anti-HTLV positive based on Elisa and confirmatory tests were considered as HTLV infected individuals and a group of healthy donors was selected as the control through 2006-2008. Data were analyzed with Chi-square by SPSS17. In this study, 250582 volunteers embarked on blood donation. Among them, 1011 (0.4 %) HTLV+ cases were confirmed. The prevalence rates of the virus were 0.47%, 0.39% and 0.35%, respectively. The results of this study shows a decreasing trend in the prevalence of HTLV among blood donors. In fact blood donors are regarded as people who have less risk behaviors. To further improve blood safety, measures should be taken to identify the prevalence rate in general population and the related risk factors so that high risk donors would be excluded effectively.