This episode comes in two parts, recorded a couple of months apart to reflect what was happening in 2016 with Zika virus.
Original Zika Podcast (July 2016); Start here
Zika Update (September 2016)
Dr. Joe Chaffin
Talk of Zika has been pretty much everywhere for most of 2016, with athletes declining to participate in the Olympic Games, and pregnant ladies concerned about their unborn children. The blood industry has taken steps to reduce for the possibility of transmission through transfusion, as well. Until now, however, Zika in the U.S. was primarily acquired by travelers to countries where the Aedes aegypti mosquito is transmitting the virus from one person to another (i.e., “local transmission”). On July 29, 2016, the Florida Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control essentially confirmed local transmission in a very small area in South Florida. This changes the game for blood collectors, and this podcast is recorded in response to numerous questions. We discuss the virus in general, the clinical issues associated with it, and the blood industry’s response moving forward. This episode is NOT an official position statement, just an educational summary for interested listeners.
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DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed on this episode are those of my guest and I alone, and do not reflect those of the organizations with which either of us is affiliated. Dr. Shafi and I do not have any relevant financial disclosures.
More a question than a comment:
I am a bench tech in our local hospital’s transfusion servicein upstate New York. We had a visit yesterday from a representative of our blood products supplier, when he announced that our pooled platelets (and soon our frozen plasma) will now be supplied to us as being pathogen-reduced by a process that will destroy the Zika virus DNA. (He was throwing terms like chemo/bioluminescent technologies that neither I nor he really understood.)
Now for the questions:
If we are able to destroy or incapacitate the viral DNA from Zika, why can’t it be done for other viruses, for example hepatitis or HIV? And if the methodologies used to destroy the virus are specific to that virus, arent we worried about mutations occuring in the viral DNA/RNA that would make those proteins unrecognized by our current methods?
Lynn, the technology that you mentioned, pathogen reduction, is not specific for Zika. It deactivates the nucleic acids of nearly all organisms that we know of, including hepatitis viruses and HIV, as you mentioned. Not only that, it deactivates the DNA in donor white blood cells in the unit, so it eliminates the need to irradiate pathogen-reduced blood products. The technology, in other words, is nonspecific, so there really are no concerns about mutations making the technology obsolete. The currently approved technology in the U.S. uses a substance that binds to any nucleic acid followed by irradiation with ultraviolet light that permanently damages the DNA/RNA (again, nonspecifically; not just Zika but any DNA/RNA present).