Improving the quality of banked blood

Article summary: Improving the quality of banked blood A very interesting article from Duke university on restoring the RBC deformability and reducing endothelium adhesion of banked blood. Banked blood is widely used for blood transfusion to replace lost or malfunctioning red blood cells. Banked blood is known to have a very limited shelf life due to storage lesions. These lesions are actually already induced in the first hours of storage. Normal RBC’s circulate for some 100 days in the human body before being recycled. Banked transfusion RBC’s in contrast are known to have a half-life of only 7 to 10 days. This short half-life and transfusion related complications can be anticipated from the (Lorrca) measured reduction in deformability and increase in endothelial adhesion of the RBC’s. This study shows that storage lesions of the banked RBC (in an animal model) may be reversed, prior to transfusion, by reloading the RBC’s with NO. Interestingly for me as a mechanical engineer the S-nitrosylation also seems to lubricate the RBC’s cytoskeleton. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279066485_Renitrosylation_of_banked_human_red_blood_cells_improves_deformability_and_reduces_adhesivity Renitrosylation of banked human red blood cells improves deformability and reduces adhesivity. Article in Transfusion · June 2015 Daniel A Riccio, Hongmei Zhu, Matthew W Foster, Brendan Huan, Christina Hofmann, Gregory M Palmer Abstract Transfusion of red blood cells (RBCs) is a frequent health care practice. However, unfavorable consequences may occur from transfusions of stored RBCs and are associated with RBC changes during storage. Loss of S-nitrosohemoglobin (SNO-Hb) and other S-nitrosothiols (SNOs) during storage is implicated as a detriment to transfusion efficacy. It was hypothesized that restoring SNOs within banked RBCs would improve RBC functions relevant to successful transfusion outcomes, namely, increased deformability...