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Prevalence and Epidemiological Profile of VDRL Seroreactivity Among Blood Donations in the Brazilian Amazon

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: (1) Background: Reactive syphilis screening makes a donor ineligible and sends the associated components to discard. This study estimated the donation-level prevalence of VDRL seroreactivity and its sociodemographic, temporal and geographic distribution in the catchment area of a regional blood service in Pará, Brazil, 2017–2023. (2) Methods: Census-based retrospective analysis of 362,705 donations recorded in the SBS.Web system of the Pará State Hemotherapy and Hematology Foundation, covering the six municipalities served by its central unit. The donation was the unit of analysis; records could not be deduplicated by donor. Confirmatory treponemal results were unavailable, so active, treated and false-positive reactions could not be distinguished. (3) Results: 3730 donations were reactive (1.03%; 95% CI 0.99–1.06). Annual prevalence rose from 0.69% (0.62–0.76) in 2017 to 1.29% (1.19–1.39) in 2021, then fell to 1.04% (0.95–1.13). Mean donor age fell from 40.1 to 33.8 years. Reactive records were 51.0% male, 71.5% single, 61.7% secondary education, 63.4% spontaneous donations. Belém held 67.9% of them (prevalence 1.01%; 0.97–1.05) and was the only municipality with a rising trend (p = 0.02). (4) Conclusions: Roughly one donation in a hundred was withdrawn from the transfusion chain, with the counseling and re-entry work each case entails. These are screening results, not confirmed infections, and measure an operational burden rather than syphilis prevalence.

Source: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

DOI: 10.3390/ijerph23101331