The impact of alanine aminotransferase testing on Hispanic blood donations.

The American Association of Blood Banks, Arlington, Va, has required that all blood donors must be tested for serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and that donations from donors with ALT levels above a certain cutoff value must be discarded. To assess the impact of this requirement on different ethnic/racial groups, the ALT levels of 1781 blood donors were compared. Hispanic blood donors had significantly higher ALT levels than did black and non-Hispanic white blood donors. No significant difference in ALT was seen between black and non-Hispanic white blood donors. We conclude that there are statistically significant differences in the ALT levels between Hispanic and non-Hispanic blood donors, and that a disproportionate number of Hispanic blood donations (11% to 13%) will be discarded as a result of testing blood donors for ALT.