Prevalence of HBV DNA among 20 million seronegative blood donations in China from 2010 to 2015

The prevalence of HBV DNA among seronegative blood donations in China has not been studied extensively on a nationwide scale. The aim of this study was to analyse the prevalence, trend, distributions, and serological characteristics of HBV DNA positive/seronegative blood donations. We collected HBV test data from all blood banks of China from 2010 to 2015 and performed supplemental serological tests and quantitative detection of HBV DNA of the seronegative/HBV DNA positive blood donations. We analysed the prevalence of HBV DNA among seronegative blood donations screened by varying nucleotide acid test (NAT) reagents. The analysis results showed that a total of 20,084,187 seronegative blood donations were screened by NAT from 2010 to 2015 in China. The average frequency of HBV DNA among seronegative blood donations was 1/1482, but there has been a steady increase from 1/1861 in 2011 to 1/1269 in 2015. The geographical distribution of seronegative and HBV DNA positive blood donations was roughly consistent with that of HBsAg. The most common serological pattern was HBeAb and HBcAb positive. In conclusion, our study offeres fundamental data of seronegative and HBV DNA positive blood donations throughout China.