Dr. M.G.R Medical University, India

It is mandatory to test each donor’s blood for syphilis by a VDRL, and for HBsAg, anti-HCV, and anti-HIV. In July 1989, consequent to the reports of high seroprevalence in commercial blood donors, mandatory screening of blood and blood products for HIV antibodies was initiated by Indian NACO. The firstobjective of this study is to estimate the seroprevalence of TTIs among voluntary blood donors at Chennai. This knowledge might give us the idea of disease burden of the society and the basic epidemiology of these diseases in the rural community. Hence in the current study , more importance has been given to explore more on the role of the other serological markers as well as molecular HBV markers that could serve as an surrogate marker in detecting the hidden HBV so that transfusion transmitted HBV is lowered considerably \r\nObjectives of thestudy :\r\n The first objective of this study is to explore the current sero-prevalence of HBsAg, anti-HCV and anti-HIV among the voluntary blood donors by the routine rapid assays (card test ) and by the ELISA methods. \r\n\r\nThe second objective is to explore the real efficiency of NAT tests in terms of increased sensitivity in identifying the potential pathogens in voluntary blood donors who are found negative by the regular serological assays used by the blood banks for the routine screening .\r\n\r\nThe third objective of this study is to compare the positivity of HBV, HCV and HIV by both the serological markers (carried out by the routine card test and ELISA method tests) and by the NAT ( using the molecular markers) in voluntary blood donors. \r\nThe role of HBV seromarkers in identifying the HBV disease status in HBsAg positive cases – to study the pattern of HBV serological profile for identifying the stage of HBV stage in cheronic HBV infected subjects among voluntary blood donors who are asymptomatic and also identify the cryptic cases \r\n To identify the nonresponders in vaccinated population amongst the blood donors who are HBsAg positive \r\n\r\nTo study the relevance of the seromarkers and HBV viral load to establish the fact that inclusion of one or more seromarkers in routine blood screening would be beneficial \r\n\r\nTo estimate the liver function test to determine the extent of damage of liver \r\nTo study the HLA pattern in hosts affected by the virus to study the occurrence of the protective gene that helps host to remain asymptomatic but they would be carriers\r\nResults ;Out of 3160 voluntary blood donors 126 were found to be positive for HBsAg( 3.9%), 2 were found positive for HCV and 2 were found positive for HIV by the routine card test.\r\nFor the detection of HCV and HIV, NAT was employed and it was able to pick-up the cases that were picked up by the routine card test, it was not able to pick-up any new additional positives. \r\nThrough the routine card test only126 samples were found to be positive for HBsAg, but from the same group ELISA was able to pick up 6 more HBsAg positive cases. In addition NAT picked up two more positives from the same group of 3160 voluntary blood donors. So through the ELISA the HBsAg prevalence was found to 4.1% (by picking up 6 additional positive cases). And with the help of the NAT the HBV prevalence was found to be 4.2% (by picking up two more HBV positives). And by employing the NAT for the detection of HBV-DNA the prevalence was found to be 4.2% (by picking up two more HBV positive cases which were missed by the regular Card test and ELISA).\r\n134 voluntary blood donors were found positive for HBsAg, \r\nOut of the 134 HBsAg positive , 79 were in the age group of 18 to 38 years, and the rest 55 were in the age group of 39-59 years. \r\nThe HBsAg positive group consisted of 89% male and 10.5% females. \r\n71.7% of them were graduates and 28.3 % were illiterates.\r\n

Aliya Tokusheva is a PhD student at the Asfendiyarov Kazakh National Medical University. She studies molecular mechanisms of epigenetic regulation of tissue-specific expression of genes, revealing the effect of heavy metal compounds on the variability of the genome of immunogenesis organs and the mutual regulatory influence of important links of these mechanisms on the course of the inflammatory process.

Chronic inflammation is a consequence of the immune system dysfunction. Such dysregulation of the immune response may induce chronic diseases, such as autoimmune diseases, diabetes, and malignant transformation of cells. Xenobiotics, including vanadium and chromium, were shown to induce inflammatory changes leading to chronic inflamation. The purpose of this research was to study the process of aseptic inflammation accompanied with intoxication with salts of heavy metals. In our study, sexually mature rats were administered aseptic inflammation (AI) alone or ammonium vanadate and potassium dichromate (AV/PD) at a dose of 5 mg/kg of BW for two weeks and after that aseptic inflammation was modeled. Lymphatic organs were studied on day 1, 7, and 14 after the onset of aseptic inflammation. Administration of AV/PD and AI resulted in structural changes in lymphatic organs and anemia observed throughout the experiment. We observed a decrease in the cellularity of the bone marrow and thymus, ratio of thymic cortex to medulla, and dystrophic changes in thymic cells and their scarcity. Also, we detected increased levels of anti-inflammatory cytokines in serum: IL-10 on day 1 and TGF-β on day 7 and 14 after the beginning of the experiment in the group AI+AV/PD comparing to intact rats and AI group. Phenotypical analysis demonstrated that by the end of experiment freshly obtained splenocytes of AI and AI+AV/PD rats contained increased percentage of His48+CD11b/c+ and His48highCD11b/c+ cells, and decreased number of induced CD3+CD4+IFN+, CD3+CD4+IL-4+ and CD3+CD8+ cells, comparing to control animals. Interestingly, during the next period of the experiment, we observed significant decrease of induced CD3+CD4+IFN+, CD3+CD4+IL-4+ and CD3+CD8+ cells in the AI+AV/PD group comparing to AI group. \r\nThus, it is possible that an elevated sera IL-10 and TGF-β1 observed in mice with chronic inflammatory processes administered with AV/PD result of abundant accumulation of His48+CD11b/c+ and His48highCD11b/c+ cells myeloid cells in the periphery, and, in turn, it could participate in the maintaining of the immunosuppressive environment that supports persistence of chronic inflammatory conditions. Therefore, intoxication with vanadium and chromium salts may support immunosuppressive environment, contributing to chronic inflammation development.\r\n