Sero-prevalence ABO and Rh blood groups and their associated Transfusion-Transmissible Infections among Blood Donors in the Central Region of Saudi Arabia

Background: Screening of blood products is considered a mandatory protocol implemented in health care facilities in order to reduce the onset of transfusion-transmitted infections (TTIs). This study was aimedto determine the sero-prevalence of ABO and Rh blood groups and their associated TTIs among blooddonors in the Central Region of Saudi Arabia. Methods: This was retrospective study performed on the blood donors' records from March 2017 toDecember 2018 at Buraidah Central Hospital Blood Bank. Study was conducted on a total of 4590 blooddonors. ABO and Rh typing was performed.The blood samples were also screened serologically for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), anti-hepatitis B core total antibodies (anti-HBc total), hepatitis C virus( HCV), human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV), human T-lymphotrophic virus-1 (HTLV-1) and veneraldisease research laboratory test(VDRL) for syphilis. Results: Out of 4590 blood donors, O positive blood group was found to be highest (42%), followed by Apositive (23.4%), B positive (20.9%), O negative (5.45%), AB positive (3.4%), A negative (2.8%), B negative( 2.1%) and AB negative (0.5%). Moreover, total number of Rh-negative donors was significantly loweredas compared with Rh-positive. Seroreactive tests were found to be positive in only 1.002% of all studieddonors and mainly found in male donors. Among TTI, anti-HBc total was the highest (0.784%), followedby HBsAg, HCV, VDRL and TPHA. Whereas all tested donors were found to be negative for HIV infections. Conclusions: The information collected for the frequency of ABO blood phenotypic groups has a vitalsignificance in establishing a simple blood group database. This study clearly determined significantlylower rate of seropositive TTIs among the studied blood donors but still steps are needed to improve theknowledge and to prevent the seropositive occurrence of TTIs. (c) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University forHealth Sciences. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).