Pathogen inactivation of platelets for transfusion.

Bacterial contamination of blood components is a recurrent topic in transfusion medicine community. This issue is even more important with platelet transfusions because of storage of platelet components at room temperature for 5 days. Pathogen inactivation methods are a proactive approach to deal with an infectious agent. All available methods use UV light, with or without a photosensitizer, to inactivate potential pathogens. As with other medical interventions, pathogen inactivation methods carry benefits and risks. Among benefits, inactivation of known and unknown transfusion-transmitted pathogens, inactivation of residual leukocytes, and increased storage length from 5 to 7 days are the most interesting. The main risk is the impact on clinical efficacy of pathogen-reduced platelets. After inactivation, pathogen-reduced platelets are associated with a lower number of platelets in the final product, lower 24-hour corrected count increment, and shorter transfusion interval when compared with non-inactivated platelets. However, eight of nine randomized controlled trials showed that transfusing pathogen-reduced platelets were not inferior to transfusing usual platelet components in the prevention of bleeding episodes. In conclusion, in our opinion, increasing safety of platelet transfusions with pathogen inactivation methods is worthy, even the trade-off of causing damage to platelets.