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Artificial blood developed for patients of any blood type, researchers say

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Re: Artificial blood developed for patients of any blood type, researchers say

#51

Post by TeMPOraL »

elboru wrote: post #41
BillinghamJ wrote: post #8

This is really interesting. I wonder whether it truly is compatible with every single person, e.g. even RH-null etc? I also wonder whether religious groups who don't accept blood would potentially accept this.

> I also wonder whether religious groups who don't accept blood would potentially accept this. I understand they don’t accept blood from other people because they believe the blood is tightly related to the soul. So if the blood is 100% artificial I don’t think they would have a reason to not accept it, unless they find another reason, and I’m sure some obscure group will find a reason to not accept artificial blood…

I had experience with one such group (Jehovah's Witnesses), so I can speak only about them, but yes, I believe they would happily accept artificial blood. The transfusion ban for JWs is related to their interpretation of Bible's verses about blood as a symbol, and verses banning consumption of blood. They already accept some blood-derived medication; generally, the smaller subcomponent of blood something is, the more acceptable they find it.

Re: Artificial blood developed for patients of any blood type, researchers say

#52

Post by derefr »

rscho wrote: post #19
derefr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An “unlimited blood budget” might obviate hemodialysis in favour of just doing a “blood change”, which—depending on how you do it—may protect the liver and kidneys from things we can’t manage to pull out in a single hemodialysis pass. It might also change the face of surgery. You know the phrase “he’s bleeding out!” Well, who cares? We have blood pressure to spare, now. We could go through a couple gallons during the…

Uuuh no. Real blood unfortunately does more than transport oxygen. So "hook them up to the tank" isn't a solution, and isn't a problem only in a surgeon's mind.

I was talking about what this technique would do “if successful”—as in, if developed further. A full solution would likely include “generic” platelets and innate-immune cells into the mix, genetically-modified such that they don’t present graft-host disease; but would likely leave out adaptive-immune cells, leaving those to the marrow to reproduce.

(Or, helpfully, not; a “complete blood transplant”, done at the same time as a bone-marrow transplant, would serve as a much more immediate reinitialization of the body’s immune system in the face of autoimmune disease. Right now we try to do that with hemodialysis, but although we filter out the memory B- and T-cells themselves, we don’t manage to [immediately] filter out their chemosignals, so autoimmune response currently continues for a few days.)

Re: Artificial blood developed for patients of any blood type, researchers say

#53

Post by TeMPOraL »

hanniabu wrote: post #13

If I'm not mistaken, it sounds like this is to be used only in emergency situations almost as if it's some type of "filler" that can help keep your blood pressure up of you've lost an extreme amount of blood. It sounds like it may provide more benefits than that, but I say "filler" because it doesn't sound like you can replace all the blood in your body with this artificial blood.

It must be a better filler than the ordinary, though because from what I remember being told, there already is a standard filler using in "bloodless surgeries" for people refusing blood transfusions; AFAIR a saline solution is good enough if all you need is to keep the blood pressure up.

Re: Artificial blood developed for patients of any blood type, researchers say

#56

Post by M2Ys4U »

LeonM wrote: post #47
wbl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm bleeding out and the blood bank is dry I'm not going to be so picky. A few weeks later I'll have made my own to replace it.

Obviously, any blood is better then no blood. But will you survive that long on artificial blood if it doesn't contain all the right properties for your body?

I would have thought that getting blood into trauma patients in the field would be the main application for this?

Once back in a hospital setting they could switch to using real blood.

Re: Artificial blood developed for patients of any blood type, researchers say

#57

Post by M2Ys4U »

solidasparagus wrote: post #27
njsubedi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In under-developed countries like Nepal, yes. Every year women from rural villages lose their lives because of excessive bleeding. No nearby health facility has a blood type segmentation facility; let alone a blood bank. If the government could provide the artificial blood to such rural villages, we could expect to reduce the maternal mortality rate of Nepal to a great extent.

So the core issue here is you can't know what type of blood to give? Why would artificial blood solve the problem of no nearby blood banks?

If artificial blood has different storage requirements than the real thing, perhaps it'd be easier to have more and more remote blood banks?

Re: Artificial blood developed for patients of any blood type, researchers say

#58

Post by maxerickson »

braunshizzle wrote: post #48

From what I understand (also heard about this in a podcast recently), they take existing blood of any type and are able to modify the RH and type. So blood still needs to be donated but it can be any Typs and RH as that is what can be modified to any type and RH now.

I wonder if you heard about https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/type-blood-converted... which is a different line of research?

Re: Artificial blood developed for patients of any blood type, researchers say

#59

Post by PyroLagus »

Karunamon wrote: post #49
elboru wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also wonder whether religious groups who don't accept blood would potentially accept this. I understand they don’t accept blood from other people because they believe the blood is tightly related to the soul. So if the blood is 100% artificial I don’t think they would have a reason to not accept it, unless they find another reason, and I’m sure some obscure group will find a reason to not accept artificial blood…

At least in the case of one of those groups (Jehovah's Witnesses), it's based on a bit of text in the bible saying literally "abstain from blood". Transfusions are no good, including your own blood previously stored. Fractions and products are in a grey area though and left up to personal conscience.

> including your own blood previously stored

Wait, really?

Re: Artificial blood developed for patients of any blood type, researchers say

#60

Post by braunshizzle »

maxerickson wrote: post #58
braunshizzle wrote: post #48

From what I understand (also heard about this in a podcast recently), they take existing blood of any type and are able to modify the RH and type. So blood still needs to be donated but it can be any Typs and RH as that is what can be modified to any type and RH now.

I wonder if you heard about https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/type-blood-converted... which is a different line of research?

Yeah that was it. Reviewing the initial article posted here, it's a different line of research then I was thinking. However it looks like the success rate is still only 60% (when testing on rabbits). The Wiley article on the grant (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/trf.15427) leaves clues that it's still derived from blood at some point and not entirely artificial.

Still very interesting to see that we are making progress towards creating fully artificial, non-type specific blood that anyone can use in a time of need.

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