The Prevalence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection among Voluntary Blood Donors in Mainland China: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND: The epidemic of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in China has been increasing. Despite the implementation of screening strategies, there was still the residual risk of transfusion-transmitted HIV. This study investigated the HIV prevalence among voluntary blood donors during the past 24 years in order to characterize the epidemiology of HIV. METHODS: The literature concerning the HIV screening reactive rate and prevalence in Chinese voluntary blood donors were collected through the systematic searching of four electronic databases. After integrating data, following the Preferred Reporting of Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, data manipulation and statistical analyses were conducted by Stata 12.0. We investigated the trend of HIV prevalence (and 95% CIs) and related epidemiological characteristics among blood donors in mainland China. RESULTS: The results indicated that HIV prevalence was 0.0165% (95% CI, 0.0155%-0.0176%) with a remarkable rise, which varied from 2000 (0.0034%) to 2017 (0.0247%). Importantly, the heterogeneity was found in occupations and Donation frequency. Additionally, the HIV prevalence were significantly higher among male donors than among female donors. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicated obvious difference between HIV screening reactive rate and HIV prevalence in Chinese blood donors and HIV screening reactive rate cannot reflect reality of HIV infection. In this study, continuous increased trend of HIV prevalence demonstrates extended residual risk of blood transfusion, and the whole society is supposed to pay close attention to HIV infection.