27 First case of HIV window donation in Switzerland after 8 years of universal HIV NAT screening

Transfusion-associated HIV transmission is a rare but dreaded event. About 350’000 donations are annually screened for human-immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in Switzerland. Anti-HIV antibody screening by ELISA testing may fail in early infection because of a diagnostic window-phase of about 21 days. Therefore, blood donations in Switzerland are screened for HIV by nucleic acid test (NAT) since 2002. The diagnostic window phase for HIV will be diminished by NATscreening. At an average the remaining time period accounts for 5 to 6 days. The adjacent figure shows the kinetics of virological markers and the host immune response in the early phase of HIV infection. The p24-antigen will be detected about 14 days after infection, as can be inferred from the graph.