This Article  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Charles Marwick

JAMA. 1995;273(5):366.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

THOUSANDS OF NEW volunteer blood donors may be added to increase the dangerously low national pool as soon as blood banks are able to review and put into effect a recent recommendation from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

One screening test for hepatitis B core antigen in the blood of potential donors has outlived its usefulness and should be discontinued, a panel of experts convened by the NIH last month concluded. Use of the alanine transaminase (ALT) test (also known as alanine aminotransferase) as a tool for identifying blood that may transmit posttransfusion non-A, non-B (NANB) hepatitis began during 1986 and 1987. It was introduced by blood banks acting largely on a recommendation made in 1985 by an advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration.

Lacking a direct means of detecting NANB hepatitis virus, blood banks used the liver enzyme—measuring test as a surrogate marker for the virus's . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?