Blood and Blood Components: From Similarities to Differences

Abstract

Blood transfusion is made possible because, in most countries and organizations, altruistic individuals voluntarily, anonymously, and generously donate (without compensation) either whole blood or separated components that are then processed and distributed by professionals, prior to being allocated to recipients in need. Being part of modern medicine, blood transfusion uses so-called standard blood components when relative to cellular fractions and fresh plasma. However, as will be discussed in this paper, strictly speaking, such so-called labile blood components are not completely standard. Furthermore, the prevalent system based on voluntary, non-remunerated blood donation is not yet universal and, despite claims by the World Health Organization that 100% of blood collection will be derived from altruistic donations by 2020 (postponed to 2025), many obstacles may hinder this ambition, especially when relative to the collection of the enormous amount of plasma destined for fractionation into plasma derivative or drugs. Finally, country organizations also vary due to the economy, sociology, politics, and epidemiology. This paper then, discusses the particulars (of which ethical considerations) of blood transfusion diversity and the consequences for donors, patients, and society.

What about Platelet Function in Platelet Concentrates?

“…Any step from the donation to the transfusion has an impact on the quality of the PC. 1,2,4,6,12,13 As mentioned before there are criteria that have to be met from visual inspection to cell count and pH. The ex vivo properties have been explored visually (presence of aggregates, swirling score) and investigated by in vitro assays (including platelet phenotype and functions) and more recently by omic approaches [14][15][16] (i.e., metabolomics, 17,18 transcriptomics, 19 or proteomics 20 ).…”

Deformability based sorting of stored red blood cells reveals donor-dependent aging curves

“…Donated red blood cells (RBCs) are a central component of critical patient care with >85 million units transfused globally per year 1 . A fundamental challenge in the transfusion of donated RBCs is that not all donated RBC units can confer the same benefits to recipients 2,3 . Specifically, transfusion specialists have long been aware that certain RBC units are able to circulate for long periods of time in recipients to maintain hemostasis, while other units are rapidly cleared, leading to the need for repeat transfusions [4][5][6][7][8] .…”

Transfusion medicine: Overtime paradigm changes and emerging paradoxes

“…It has been replaced by blood components, each characterized by particular properties. Each component has its own characteristics: cells have to be maintained in a liquid phase without clotting; each component should be characterized by a number of tests (the list of parameters is infinite) [27] . Each component should be safe in terms of infectious pathogens.…”

“…The security of blood components is higher than ever, but a progressive loss of the intrinsic qualities of whole blood was the price to be paid. We have to face storage lesions, chemical alterations due to the presence of various solutions used to store blood, modifications of the proteins when pathogen inactivation procedures are used, modifications of the red blood cell membrane with cold storage, production of microparticles [27] . In summary, blood is no more blood when transfusion medicine is on stage.…”