Detecting Bioterror Attacks by Screening Blood Donors: A Best-Case Analysis

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Emerg Infect Dis
• Personal Author:
  Kaplan, Edward H. ; Patton, Christopher A. ; FitzGerald, William P. ; Wein, Lawrence M.
• Description:
  To assess whether screening blood donors could provide early warning of a bioterror attack, we combined stochastic models of blood donation and the workings of blood tests with an epidemic model to derive the probability distribution of the time to detect an attack under assumptions favorable to blood donor screening. Comparing the attack detection delay to the incubation times of the most feared bioterror agents shows that even under such optimistic conditions, victims of a bioterror attack would likely exhibit symptoms before the attack was detected through blood donor screening. For example, an attack infecting 100 persons with a noncontagious agent such as Bacillus anthracis would only have a 26% chance of being detected within 25 days; yet, at an assumed additional charge of $10 per test, donor screening would cost $139 million per year. Furthermore, even if screening tests were 99.99% specific, 1,390 false-positive results would occur each year. Therefore, screening blood donors for bioterror agents should not be used to detect a bioterror attack.
• Subjects:
  Anthrax Bacillus Anthracis Bioterrorism Blood Donors Communicable Diseases False Positive Reactions Humans Mass Screening Perspective Probability
• Source:
  Emerg Infect Dis. 9(8):909-914
• Pubmed ID:
  12967486
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC3020608
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Volume:
  9
• Issue:
  8
• Collection(s):
  Emerging Infectious Diseases
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:3ffc9958dda7cfbae254b383293cc82b1a1fee8cf470e101c21800c3b8206210
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/14248/cdc_14248_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 344.23 KB ]