By PAUL HARASIM / RJ
A number of veterans as
well as doctors now
believe that Vietnam
veterans...could have
contracted hepatitis C
through unsafe jet gun
vaccinations.
While it’s possible the government’s position on transmission of hepatitis C among boomers may have resulted in less testing, it’s critical today boomers forget any fears of stigma and get the easy blood test.
Laboratory of Plasma Derivatives, Food and Drug Administration, Bethesda,
Maryland.
Because of concern about the safety of immune globulins with respect to
transmission of hepatitis C, the partitioning of hepatitis C virus (HCV) during
alcohol fractionation of a plasma pool prepared exclusively from
anti-HCV-reactive donations was examined. Quantitation of HCV RNA was
accomplished by nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) at limiting dilutions.
One PCR unit was arbitrarily defined as the minimum amount of HCV RNA from which
an amplified product could be detected. The starting plasma pool contained 1.4 x
10(5) PCR units per mL. Most of the HCV RNA was found in cryoprecipitate and in
Cohn fractions I and III, but it was also detected in fraction II, which is used
for immunoglobulin G preparations. A 3.4-percent solution of IgG prepared from
this fraction II contained 30 PCR units per mL. The fractionation process
leading to immune globulin resulted in overall reduction in HCV RNA by a factor
of 4.7 x 10(4). Although the presence of HCV RNA in the final product does not
necessarily imply the presence of infectious virus, this work suggests that the safety of immune globulins with respect to HCV
transmission is not due solely to the partitioning of HCV away from the
immunoglobulin fraction.
