London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Innovative blood treatment technology could improve the safety of blood transfusions in high risk malaria zones, according to a new study published in The Lancet.

Patients, especially children, who undergo blood transfusions in sub-Saharan Africa are at high risk of transfusion-transmitted malaria, since donated blood is often not subjected to the large number of safety measures applied in developed countries such as the UK.

This study, led by the University of Cambridge, investigated a new method of treating donated blood with a technology that combines UV radiation and vitamin B2. The researchers tested the technology in a real-world treatment setting in Ghana and found that as well as being safe to use, it could minimise the risk of malaria infection following blood transfusions.

So how important are the results of this trial and what factors need to be considered going forward? David Conway, Professor of Biology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said:

"This study addresses an important and widespread health issue, using a carefully designed clinical trial conducted in a large African hospital. The results clearly show that patients receiving transfusion of treated blood preparations have a significantly lower risk of acquiring malaria parasites, compared with patients receiving transfusion prepared according to the local standard procedures.

"The difference between the groups looks encouraging in this initial study, but a larger clinical trial will be needed to get a more accurate estimate of the effect. To evaluate the usefulness of this procedure, a larger trial involving several hospitals at different sites would be important. This would give more statistical precision to the results, and also see if the effect can be reproduced in different situations.

"Further studies should also examine practical issues of the blood treatment and storage. This would need to be managed by a variety of staff in different hospital settings, so it will be vital to see how the new procedure might be able to fit within the current systems. Such future studies, if they are undertaken by independent researchers, would really help determine the effectiveness and usefulness of this treatment."

Publication

• J-P Allain et al. Effect of Plasmodium inactivation in whole blood on the incidence of blood transfusion-transmitted malaria in endemic regions: the African Investigation of the Mirasol System (AIMS) randomised controlled trial. The Lancet