Human Circovirus is not detected in plasma pools for fractionation

Background: Human Circovirus 1 and 2 were recently described in a French hepatitis case and in two Chinese drug users. Because of its small size and presumable high resistance to both inactivation and removal by nanofilters, such viruses-if determined to be even pathogenic-should be considered with respect to the safety of plasma derivatives. We, therefore, investigated the prevalence and titer of these viruses in plasma pools before fractionation.

Methods and materials: We tested for the presence of Human Circovirus 1 and 2 by qPCR in 48 plasma pools derived from healthy donors from Europe, USA, and Japan, corresponding to more than 200,000 plasma donations.

Results: We did not detect the presence of Human Circovirus 1 and 2 in any of the plasma pools, with a limit of detection of 300-600 genome copies per mL of plasma.

Conclusions: These results indicate that high levels of circovirus are not widely prevalent in such donations.