Subscribe to Search results

HCV Screening under Chiron showed effectiveness at testing when samples from North London Blood Transfusion Centre donations had tested positive when blind tested.

Published on:

ACVSB met for the first time on 4 April 1989, chaired by Dr Harris. ACVSB's role was to give advice to the UK health ministers and would focus on the major policy issues with the implementation of the policy being for others. The issue of anti-HCV testing was not covered specifically.

Published on:

Denmark, Sweden and Finland were trialling the Chiron/Ortho anti-HCV test, and several other countries were planning to do so.

Published on:

Dr Tuddenham wrote to John Canavan to support the move to evaluate the test based on detection of antibody to polypeptide synthesised by recombinant yeast clones of the HCV virus. This is because screening donor blood by such an assay could reduce the transmission rate of non-A non-B Hepatitis in single donor products and in some pooled plasma derivatives.

Published on:

Dr Lane wrote to Dr Rejman that the presence of antibody for Hepatitis C was not necessarily a marker of infectivity in HCV screening. However, Dr Gunson and the ACTTD were reporting the opposite of this, which Dr Mortimer and Professor Cash appeared to endorse.

Published on:

In a letter to Dr Rejman, Professor Arie Zuckerman stated that despite the projected costs of the screening test, the introduction of screening could not be delayed much beyond FDA approval considering the overall morbidity of chronic non-A non-B Hepatitis (including apparently autoimmune liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma), and litigation which would be indefensible.

Published on:

A proposal for study of donations in three RTCs, Glasgow, Newcastle and North London, was agreed to be coordinated by Dr Gunson and the proposal stated that donors who tested anti-HCV positive were to be interviewed by a member of the medical staff to take medical history and arrange liver function tests.

Published on:

Dr Tedder prepared a preliminary report on the samples tested which showed how reactive the Abbott and Ortho testing were.

Published on:

The Advisory Committee on Virological Safety of Blood tabled a proposal on counselling of donors who tested anti-HCV positive and proposed to convene a meeting to consider and provide recommendations.

Published on:

An Advisory Committee on the Virological Safety of Blood discussed cases of post-transfusion hepatitis discovered through HCV screening, and second generation trials of HCV tests conducted with Ortho and Abbott.

Published on:

The first meeting of the ACTTD was held and its role was to brief the ACVSB about the decision on whether to introduce anti HCV screening.

Published on:

The ACTTD decided that Dr Gunson's paper should be used as the basis of the paper to be submitted to the department's committee and matters referred to ie counselling and flow charts would form part of the policy decisions to be taken if the Department of Health accepted the recommendation of the Committee.

Published on:

Dr Gunson reported the outcome of the ACVSB meeting stating that the Department of Health committee had deferred the decision to introduce routine screening and that it was hoped that by their next meeting at the end of April 1990 they would have received further advice and reached a decision.

Published on:

Dr P Mortimer in a letter to Dr Gunson stated that he still had several concerns about the operation of HCV screening and that it must be decided in the light of the performance of the best screening and confirmatory tests available, and these were to be considered at the next advisory committee meeting.

Published on:

At a meeting of the ACTTD it was agreed that confirmatory testing should be carried out using the RIBA-2 test. The committee debated the use of PCR tests but concluded that more information was needed.

Published on:

Professor Jean-Pierre Allain in a letter to Dr Gunson, Dr McClelland and all RTC directors in England and Wales proposed that they could take advantage of the two months before the implementation of HCV screening to carry out a study testing for anti-HCV in samples from recipients of blood transfusions.

Published on:

Dr Andrzej Rejman and John Canavan wrote to all members of the ACVSB enclosing a paper from Dr Philip Mortimer titled "Non-A, Non-B Hepatitis".

Published on:

In Dr Rejman's letter to the members of the ACVSB he stated that the Chiron test may also make surrogate testing obsolete, provided that the UKBTS and other studies confirmed the promising results so far reported, and assuming that the cost benefit analysis was satisfactory.

Published on:

At a meeting of the ACVSB Dr Gunson presented the preliminary report on the UKBTS study of surrogate and Chiron testing.

Published on:

In a letter to Professor Cash, Dr McIntyre stated that the ACVSB was considering the tests available and if it were thought to be desirable to introduce further routine screening, which would be done simultaneously throughout the UK.

Published on: