By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Blood Weekly -- Investigators publish new report on Health and Medicine - Transfusion Medicine. According to news reporting out of Sydney, Australia, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “Like a number of other countries, Australia mandates that a man who has had sex with men is deferred from donation until 12 months has elapsed since the sexual activity. This review examined whether this deferral period is justified by current evidence.”
Financial support for this research came from National Health and Medical Research Council.
Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the University of New South Wales, “Databases (Medline, EMBASE, Scopus) were searched using terms ‘blood donation’ and ‘gay’ or ‘MSM’ and ‘HIV risk’ from the mid-1980s to the present to investigate the history of donor deferral policy and its rationale in Australia. Gay and bisexual men in Australia face a higher risk of human immunodeficiency virus and other blood-borne viruses (BBVs) than other populations. All blood donations, however, are tested for BBVs, and with current testing technologies the window period during which infection may be present but not detected is now less than 1?week. While there is a moral imperative to maintain blood safety, there is also a moral imperative to ensure that differential treatment of population groups with regard to donation eligibility is scientifically justified. Potential social harms that may flow from a dissonance between deferral policy and its evidence base include loss of trust and increased nonadherence to policy. A 12-month deferral for gay and bisexual men exceeds what is required to maintain blood safety. This disparity potentially causes social harm without any additional benefit to public health.”
According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Reducing the deferral period to 3 months will not increase health risk to recipients and may have the social benefit of increasing inclusiveness.”
For more information on this research see: Blood donor deferral for men who have sex with men: still room to move. Transfusion , 2017;():. Transfusion can be contacted at: Blackwell Publishing Inc, 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA. (Wiley-Blackwell - http://www.wiley.com/; Transfusion - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1537-2995)
Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting B. Haire, Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia. Additional authors for this research include K. Whitford and J.M Kaldor.
The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1111/trf.14445. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.
Publisher contact information for the journal Transfusion is: Blackwell Publishing Inc, 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world. Copyright 2018, NewsRx LLC
CITATION: (2018-01-04), New Transfusion Medicine Findings from University of New South Wales Reported (Blood donor deferral for men who have sex with men: still room to move), Blood Weekly, 9, ISSN: 1532-4559, BUTTER® ID: 014910388
From the newsletter Blood Weekly.
https://www.newsrx.com/Butter/#!Search:a=14910388
NewsRx® offers 195 weekly newsletters providing comprehensive information on all professional topics, ranging from health, pharma and life science to business, tech, energy, law, and finance. Our newsletters report only the most relevant and authoritative information from qualified sources.
Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in:
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0041-1132_Transfusion
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit