Reliability of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) for Detection of Hepatitis B virus (HBV) in Healthy Blood Donors as Compared to That of Enzyme-Linked Immuno-Sorbent Assay (ELISA)

Abstract

Careful screening of the donated blood is mandatory and tests that are currently used for the detection HBV

are mainly serological using enzyme lined immune-sorbent assay (ELISA). These tests may have some

design for example, missing of some infected individuals that fall at or in the window period. More sensitive

tests for example polymerase chain reaction (PCR) that may have the capacity to detect viruses RNA or

DNA are a necessity now to minimize the danger of transmitting such a serious disease through blood

transfusion, a life saving maneuver. This study has been conducted for detection of hepatitis B virus in

healthy donate blood using two methods Enzyme Linked Immune Sorbent Assay (ELISA) as serological test

and Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) as molecular method. In this study, samples were collected randomly

from 100 apparently healthy middle-age blood donors at some stage during donation session of central blood

bank in Khartoum teaching hospital. Individuals with positive screening were asked for repeat sample and

confirmatory test were carried out. Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) screening test were performed using

ELISA and PCR tests. All the results were analyzed using Statistical Packages of Social Sciences version13

(SPSS). HBs Ag was detected in 15% of samples by using ELISA while, 85% of samples were found to be

negative. However, when using PCR for detection of Hepatitis B virus deoxyribonucleic acid (HBV DNA),

23% of samples were found to be positive. Accordingly, it seems that ELISA is an excellent test to rule out

HBV infection in non-infected people but it may be unreliable to confirm the disease in actually infected

patients.