Failure and success of HIV tests for the prevention of HIV‐1 transmission by blood and tissue donations

French blood banks recently implemented nucleic acid testing (NAT) of all blood donations to reduce the risk of HIV transmission during the pre‐seroconversion period. For tissue donation, HIV infection screening relies on HIV p24 antigen and anti‐HIV1 and 2 antibody detection. In this report, two related cases of infectious donations are described from a cornea donor during the preseroconversion window who was infected by an HIV antibody and NAT negative blood donor. After investigation, the blood donor was found to be herself in the preseroconversion window. Two months after donation, she was found to be HIV positive. The residual risk of HIV infectious blood donations since NAT has been introduced is estimated to be lower than one out of 2.5 millions. Individual NAT instead of minipool testing would not increase significantly the blood transfusion safety. In contrast, introduction of NAT should be considered to increase tissue donation safety as soon as such screening will be possible technically. J. Med. Virol. 73:347–349, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.