Syphilis serological tests have been performed on the total 44023 general blood donors for eight and a half years since 1973. Four sorts of methods such as slide glass test, treponema pallidum hemaggulutination (TPHA), Ogata method and fluorescent treponemal antibodies absorption test (FTA-abs) were tested to examine syphilis.
The following results have been obtained.
1) The rate of donors estimated to be unsuitable for transfusion because of showing syphilis by these tests was 0.61%.
2) Forty nine percent of donors failed in screening tests was caused to be slide glass test positive, and about 50% of them was showed as (±) positive.
3) On confirm tests, 94.1% of positive donors determined by slide glass test except other methods was finally diagnosed as biological false positive (BFP) or normal, while 85.7% of that determined by TPHA was diagnosed as having syphilis.
4) Ratio of BFP between male to female was identified as 1 to 2.6 without any differences in an each age groups.
5) Coincidence of TPHA and FTA-abs was 88.9%, while TPHA and slide glass test coincided with the rate of 67.5%.
It is reasonable to conclude that TPHA is seemed to be more reliable test to exclude donors having syphilis as comparing with slide glass test, because TPHA seldom causes to show BFP.
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