Glossary
Minipool
A minipool is composed of samples from multiple blood donors and “pooling” them together in order to test multiple donors at the same time. This process is used in blood donor nucleic acid testing (NAT) for transfusion-transmitted diseases. Minipools are used in NAT for HIV-1, hepatitis C virus, hepatitis B virus, West Nile Virus, and Zika virus. Testing multiple donors at one time slightly decreases the sensitivity of the screening test, but such a decrease is not generally considered substantial.
Back to Glossary List