Rotary TTK, Bangalore opens centralized Nucleic Acid Testing Technology (NAT). During the launch Dr Latha Jagannathan Medical Director and Managing Trustee Rotary TTK Blood Bank said “We believe it is our duty to ensure blood safety as the patient has a right to expect it, and the medical fraternity has an obligation to create awareness on this crucial subject.”

Hemogenomics, a Bangalore based company has been instrumental in bringing state-of-the-art technologies for disease prevention, diagnosis and monitoring. The company has started its operations by bringing Nucleic Acid Testing (NAT) into India for making blood safer. The promoters of this company are Mr. N Vaghul (Chairman ICICI), Dr. Ashok Ganguly (former MD & Chairman Hindustan lever, current Chairman ABP and ICICIOnesource), Mr. Subhash Bagaria (Chairman & MD – Millipore India & Kemwell Group) Dr. William J Rutter (Founder – Chiron, his lab invented the Hepatitis B vaccine and discovered Hepatitis C) and Sumit Bagaria (President, Hemogenomics Pvt. Ltd.)

Speaking at the National Blood Safety Seminar Series organized across India by Chiron and Hemogenomics, Mr. Sumit Bagaria, President, Hemogenomics said “We are dedicated to creating awareness and influencing the mindsets of the healthcare providers and the Government to offer its citizens the choice for the safest possible blood. Nucleic Acid Testing (NAT) is used for the screening of human immunodeficiency virus - 1 (HIV-1), Hepatitis B (HBV) and Hepatitis C (HCV) virus in donated blood. This test is the first simultaneous, single tube NAT solution for HIV-1, HCV and HBV. It is a direct test where it actually detects the viral nucleic acid (RNA/DNA). Being a direct test it reduces the window of detection for all these three viruses from the current available serological (ELISA) tests. NAT combines the advantages of direct detection of the organism with sensitivity several orders of magnitude higher than that of traditional methods. The screening of blood for infectious markers (anti HIV 1 & 2, anti HCV and HBsAg) is done using Government approved test kits (Elisa or Rapid Kits). Despite these efforts, residual risk of transfusion-transmitted infections remains because of donors in the pre-seroconversion (window period), viral variants, non-seroconverting (immunosilent) or delayed seroconverting carriers (atypical seroconversion). Nucleic Acid Testing (NAT) along with serological testing can reduce this residual risk to a great extent because it involves highly specific detection of an infectious agent (the virus itself) with much higher sensitivity. “

NAT is a recently developed technology that allows detection of very small amounts of genetic material (DNA or RNA) by a process of massive copying (amplification) of a gene fragment. Currently, donors of blood and plasma are tested for Hepatitis B surface antigen, antibodies to HCV, antibodies to HIV and sometimes HIV-1 antigens, which are the virus' own proteins. However, there is still a "window period" during which a donor can be infected, but have negative screening tests. With the use of Individual Donor Testing (IDT) NAT for HCV, the "window period" for detection of HCV is reduced by 67 days (from an average of 72 days to 5 days). For HIV-1, the average window period with antibody tests is 22 days. Antigen testing cuts the window period to approximately 16 days and NAT further reduces this period to 5.6 days. Given the high rate of sero-positivity of HIV, HCV and HBV in India and keeping in mind the high percentage of first time and replacement donors, it is likely that adding NAT to the current screening tests will have a very significant reduction in Transfusion Transmitted Infections making our blood safer.

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