Prevalence and Epidemiological Profile of VDRL Seroreactivity Among Blood Donations in the Brazilian Amazon
Francisco Ocian de Araújo Junior, Marcia Helena Machado Nascimento, Renata Bezerra Hermes de Castro, Glenda Roberta Oliveira Naiff Ferreira, Gisele Maria Cardoso da Silva, Neiva José da Luz Dias Junior, Laryssa Cristiane Palheta Vulcão, Raisa Oksana Lídia Ellis Freire de Sena Garcia da Silva, Adriana de Sá Pinheiro dos Santos, Camila Cristina Girard Santos, Yasmin Martins de Sousa, Bárbara Alves Ruela de Azevedo, Eliel Pereira Faustino Neto, Rubenilson Caldas ValoisBackground: Reactive syphilis screening makes a donor ineligible and sends the associated components to discard. This study estimated the donation-level prevalence of VDRL seroreactivity and its sociodemographic, temporal and geographic distribution in six municipalities served by a regional blood center in Pará, Brazil, 2017–2023. Methods: Census-based retrospective analysis of 362,705 donations recorded in the SBS.Web system of the Pará State Hemotherapy and Hematology Foundation. The donation was the unit of analysis; records could not be deduplicated by donor. Confirmatory treponemal results were unavailable, so active, treated and false-positive reactions could not be distinguished. Results: 3730 donations were reactive (1.03%; 95% CI 0.99–1.06). Annual prevalence rose from 0.69% (0.62–0.76) in 2017 to 1.29% (1.19–1.39) in 2021, then fell to 1.04% (0.95–1.13). Mean donor age fell from 40.1 to 33.8 years. Reactive records were 51.0% male, 71.5% single, 61.7% secondary education, 63.4% spontaneous donations. Belém held 67.9% of them (prevalence 1.01%; 0.97–1.05) and was the only municipality with a rising trend (p = 0.02). Conclusions: Roughly one donation in a hundred was withdrawn from the transfusion chain, with the counseling and re-entry work each case entails. These are screening results, not confirmed infections, and measure an operational burden rather than syphilis prevalence.