Work

Correlation of West Nile Virus Incidence in Donated Blood with West Nile Neuroinvasive Disease Rates, United States, 2010–2012

Year: 2016

Type: article

Abstract: Over the past decade, West Nile virus (WNV) has spread across the United States.We aggregated blood donor data from 2010-2012 and then calculated the incidence of WNV RNA-positive donations and compared the incidence with neuroinvasive disease (NID) case data from the ArboNET surveillance system.Of 10,107,853 donations, 640 were confirmed positive.The seasonal WNV incidence rate per 100,000 persons was 33.4 (95% CI 22-45) in 2010, 25.7 (95% CI 15-34) in 2011, and 119.9 (95% CI 98-141) in 2012.NID to blood donor ratios were 1 in 164 (95% CI 152-178) in 2010, 1 in 158 (95% CI 145-174) in 2011, and 1 in 131 (95% CI 127-136) in 2012.We updated estimates of the ratio of NID to WNV infection rates, demonstrating stable disease penetrance over the study period.Blood donor WNV RNA screening is a valuable public health tool for WNV surveillance.W est Nile virus (WNV), a mosquitoborne flavivirus, was first isolated in 1937 from a patient in Uganda (1).The virus was introduced into the United States in 1999, resulting in a focal epidemic that year in New York, New York.WNV then made a westward migration across the United States, becoming an endemic public health problem that is monitored through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC; Atlanta, GA, USA) ArboNET surveillance system (2).Although most WNV infections Correlation of West Nile Virus Incidence in Donated Blood with West Nile Neuroinvasive Disease Rates, United States, 2010-2012

Source: Emerging infectious diseases

DOI: 10.3201/eid2302.161058