Optimization of Pooling Technique for Hepatitis C Virus Nucleic Acid Testing (NAT) in Blood Banks

Background: Blood safety is an important health issue, especially in Egypt with a high prevalence of HCV infection and recent massive efforts for control. Objectives: The study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of the nucleic acid amplification technique (NAT) in Egyptian blood banks. Methods: A total of 12,036 plasma sample donations collected from two Egyptian blood banks were screened by NAT using a chessboard pooling scheme. The donations were divided into two groups: Group 1 included 10,020 seronegative, while Group 2 included 2,016 blindly tested donations. Results: Out of the total donations, seven tests were positive by NAT. The serology results of those seven seronegative donations were confirmed. They were also retested individually by NAT. The pool format 6x12 was the most reliable for screening. The cost of NAT was reduced to one-quarter and the positive sample in the pool was easily pointed by using the chessboard format. Conclusions: The study demonstrated the importance of introducing NAT for HCV screening in Egyptian blood banks by adopting a pooling scheme to reduce cost.