Prevalence of transfusion-transmitted infections in hospitalized patients before transfusion and volunteer blood donors in Zhejiang Province, China

•Transfusion-transmitted infections (TTIs) have become a major concern, jeopardizing the safe use of blood in clinical practice.•We assessed TTI seroprevalence in hospitalized patients and voluntary blood donors in Zhejiang Province.•Positive blood cultures pose a risk to the health of blood recipients with low immunity, and seriously compromise the safe use of blood in clinical practice.•Expanding the pathogen categories of blood screening programs and adopting scientifically sound transfusion methods could improve blood quality and ensure blood safety. To assess the need for screening of transfusion-transmitted infections (TTIs) in blood products, we assessed TTI seroprevalence in blood donors and hospitalized patients. We collected 2760 serum samples from three regions of Hangzhou, Ningbo and Huzhou from April 2021 to March 2022, and they tested by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), Hepatitis C (HCV), Treponema pallidum (TP), Cytomegalovirus (CMV), Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), Hepatitis E virus (HEV) and Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1/2 (HTLV-1/2) antibody levels. Screening test results showed that the positive rates for HBsAg, anti-HCV and anti-TP were 3.01 %, 0.39 % and 0.18 %, respectively. The positive rates for CMV IgM and CMV IgG were 0.76 % and 96.96 %, while the positive rates for EB VCA-IgM and EB EA-IgG were 1.88 % and 10.47 %; those for HEV IgM and HEV IgG were 1.16 % and 26.05 %, while the HTLV-1/2 antibody positive rate was 0.04 %. The positive rates for CMV IgG, EB EA-IgG and HEV IgG in hospitalized patients before transfusion were higher than in volunteer blood donors, and the difference was statistically significant (P