The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday set guidelines for blood donation organizations, recommending that they screen donors based on a single set of criteria, ending a restrictive policy that only applied to men who have sex with men and their partners.
The Biden administration sought to end the previous set of time delays and screening questions for people who identify as men who have sex with men and their partners. Risk assessment now applies to all potential donors.
Persons other than those who report having a new sexual partner or multiple partners and have had anal sex in the past three months will be eligible to donate blood provided all other eligibility criteria are met.
The new rules come years after the US health regulator overturned a directive from the 1980s that banned men who have sex with men from donating blood, but with the condition that they had to abstain from sex for at least a year before donating.
The FDA first proposed relaxing the sexual abstinence criteria for donating blood in January. The removal of time delays also applied to women who have sex with men who have sex with other men.
The regulator is also recommending new time limits for people taking pre-exposure prophylaxis or post-exposure prophylaxis used to prevent HIV to reflect data showing these drugs can delay HIV detection and lead to false-negative results.
The FDA said the rules aim to reduce the risk of HIV transmission through transfusions and are similar to those in the UK and Canada.
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