Author Description

This dissertation, "Recent Relaxation of Deferral Policies for MSM Blood Donors: a Systematic Review" by Jian, Huang,, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Background: Blood safety is important to blood transfusion. As men who have sex with men (MSM) are considered to have a higher risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) compared to the general population, blood donations from MSM may lead to a higher risk of transfusion-transmitted infections (TTIs). For this reason, many countries have established lifelong deferral policies for MSM blood donors since 1980s. Research have been conducted to evaluate the risks and benefits of relaxing MSM deferral policies from lifelong to a finite period, and countries such as the United Kingdom have implemented such relaxation in recent years. Nevertheless, there remains a lack of risk-benefit analyses on this topic in many countries, especially the developing ones. This review can help such countries to reconsider their MSM deferral policies. Objective: The objectives of this review are (i) to review the current deferral policies of blood donation from MSM implemented in major countries and (ii) to review the major determining factors in the risk-benefit analyses of these countries. Method: PubMed, Google Scholar, and China Journal Net were used for literature search. Only literatures with abstract and/or available full text in English or Chinese were included. The PICOS approach was used for study selection, and 37 articles were finally selected. Surveys, cohort studies, cross-sectional studies reviews, and national reports were included in th