What is it about?
This is a replication of our earlier finding that young (<50 years) men, who receive blood transfusions from female blood donors are more likely to die than men who received blood transfusions from male donors. What it adds is that this association depends on the previous pregnancies of the blood donors, which is the first step towards identifying a potential mechanism.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
According to our estimated mortality in young men can be increased by 6%. In other words about one in 16 young male transfusion recipients who die after receiving blood from a previously pregnant donor would not if they had received blood from a male donor.
Perspectives
We have confirmed the previously observed association and only in the same group where we previously observed it (i.e. young men). Specificity to this group means all other transfusion recipients (i.e. older men and all women) serve as negative controls. If any systematic bias would have occurred in our study, we would have expected it to lead to similar associations in those groups as well. We are therefore confident that the risk of systematic error is negligible. The risk that this is a chance association is also very low since it was a replication of our previous study. This is, therefore, a landmark piece of evidence that blood from previously pregnant women contributes to adverse outcomes in young male recipients.
Dr Rutger A Middelburg
Sanquin Research
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Association of Blood Transfusion From Female Donors With and Without a History of Pregnancy With Mortality Among Male and Female Transfusion Recipients, JAMA, October 2017, American Medical Association (AMA),
DOI: 10.1001/jama.2017.14825.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
