In veterinary medicine, blood transfusion is commonly performed on companion animals. The common marmoset is a small nonhuman primate with increasing popularity as an animal model in
biomedical research. Because of its small whole blood volume, the marmoset is at high risk of exsanguination, and blood transfusion is required to care for life-threatening bleeding.
However, few clinical evaluations exist on transfusions for marmosets. This study performed whole blood transfusion with cross-matching on nine marmosets and surveyed the therapeutic
effects. Recipients included clinical cases with persistent bleeding, anemia, and coma, as well as animals subjected to postoperative bleeding prophylaxis. Donors were selected from healthy
marmosets, including littermates. Cross-match assay before transfusion were all negative, and recipients showed no visible signs of transfusion-related adverse reactions. Whole blood
transfusions caused hemostasis and successful recovery in bleeding marmosets, including long-term improvement of anemia cases. Our results indicated that blood transfusion is effective for
marmosets with severe anemia and persistent hemorrhage from both non-experimental and surgical causes. Furthermore, DNA sequencing for blood-group classification revealed that all subject
marmosets were type A, suggesting that the risk of blood type mismatch may be low in this species.