Blood-derived drugs: viral safety

The stable blood products, called since 1995 “the medicines derived from blood”, are classified into five categories (albumin, clotting factors, protease inhibitors, immunoglobulins, biological glues). Their manufacture, dispensing, and pharmacovigilance (Correspendants) are provided primarily by the pharmacist. They have a great importance in the compensation of constitutional or acquired deficiency of plasma proteins. Obtaining them from blood donation (voluntary, anonymous and free), requires the application of several successive fractionation, merging, purification, elimination and/or viral inactivation. The main techniques used in fractionation are, precipitation (by cold or ethanol) and chromatography, which also contributes to the reduction of a possible viral load. The viral securisation is a decisive criterion for evaluation of the drug under the authorization of placing on the market. Other recombinant products have been developed ; they have the advantage of being equally effective but safer then plasma products. We propose in our work to review key points on securing viral transmission of medicines derived from blood.