Is human herpesvirus-8 transmitted by transfusion?

Studies of human herpesvirus-8 (HHV-8) transmission through transfusion have produced contradictory results. In North America-a region with a low prevalence of HHV-8 infection-3 studies that tested specimens from linked positive-donor/negative-recipient pairs collected before the introduction of white blood cell (WBC) reduction and the extension of red blood cell (RBC) storage found no case of transmission of HHV-8 to 151 transfusion recipients who were HHV-8-seronegative before the transfusion and received components from HHV-8-seropositive donors. In Uganda, a prospective cohort study of pediatric transfusion recipients observed a small (