[Epidemiologic study of anti-HTLV-I/II antibodies in blood donors in metropolitan France. The Retrovirus Working Group of the National Blood Transfusion Society].

Between march and april 1989, the prevalence of HTLV-I/II antibodies was studied in a non selected population of 45,033 blood donors of Continental France. Serum samples were collected and screened by 12 Blood Banks located in different parts of the country. Screening was performed by 4 ELISAs (Abbott-Du Pont de Nemours-Organon-Pharmacia) and by gelatin particle agglutination (Fujirebio); the sensitivity of these tests was previously evaluated with an HTLV-I/II panel of the French National Society of Transfusion. The reproducibly reactive sera were confirmed by Western-Blot (Du Pont) and radioimmunoprecipitation assay. Five donors were confirmed positive: the global prevalence is 0.011%. This prevalence is one of the highest in Europe. Three of the five positive donors (0.007%) are white subjects. The other two are natives from the French West Indies (0.81%). Since may 1989 the Ministry of Health recommends for Continental France to test donors originating from endemic zones or to use their plasma for fractionation. The results obtained in this study show that the efficacy of these measures are incomplete since 0.007% donors (1 out of 15,000 blood donations) are not tracked down.