All Blood Converted to Type O? 206
UnanimousCoward writes "The BBC is reporting that scientists claim to have discovered a technique to convert all blood into Type O with the discovery of an enzyme that can strip the A and B antigens. This has implications to transform the stored blood supply into transfusable blood for all. It does not address the RH negative issue, however."
Damn. (Score:5, Funny)
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Synthetic Blood (Score:3, Insightful)
Provided with the proper nutrients couldn't we keep a cell alive and dividing to have an unlimited supply?
Something I didn't know before that I learned from the article: Anyone can receive type O blood without risk.
Great post!
Re:Synthetic Blood (Score:5, Interesting)
As the father of a type O son with hemophilia this is awesome news. Opens up a much wider source of blood should the worst happen, especially since my wife and I are neither type O, and my father in law, while type O is also hemophilic.
-nB
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Re:Synthetic Blood (Score:5, Interesting)
In labs, there are several growth mediums made from cow blood (remove the red blood cells as well as several other factors). They can't be properly synthesized because of how complex it is, and that's even after the most complex stuff is removed.
It's not suprising at all that we can't synthesize it, but it's nice that we can "produce" type O from other types.
Re:Synthetic Blood (Score:5, Interesting)
I got that from junior high biology. Actual issues are more complicated when you get in deep, of course. One oddball is that you can usually survive 1 non-matching transfusion, even if it's incompatible. After that your immune system is 'primed', much like for a vaccination, and will attack a second transfusion with extreme prejudice, likely resulting in your death.
And we are testing at least one blood substitute. The last one I read about(sorry, dead tree article), was intended for use in ambulances, which can't normally carry blood. Unfortuantly, it actually performed worse than saline IV's when it came to patient survival.
As for simply cloning a blood supply, it's difficult because you'd have to clone marrow, as blood cells no longer have a nucleous. Not insurmountable at this point, but currently unable to compete with donated blood.
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Re:Synthetic Blood (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Synthetic Blood (Score:4, Informative)
In an emergency situation you wouldn't be worried about the nutritional substances. There it's about keeping oxygen flow up until they get to the hospital. Heck, with a working artificial blood substitute if that means they gotta run 5 gallons through you, they can do it.
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You're correct about the marrow and liver creating RBC's. The other organ is the spleen (as you mentioned); however, the spleen only creates RBC's (haematopoeisis) up until around the 5th or 6th month of gestation. After that, the spleen behaves like an recycling plant, returning the components of RBCs undergoing apoptosis (controlled cell death) to the body.
The more you know!
Re:Synthetic Blood (Score:4, Funny)
What about allergy to the enzyme? (Score:5, Interesting)
Which brings up the issue of whether the body would develop an immunity to the enzyme, potentially producing a fatal anaphylactic reaction upon a future transfusion.
On the other hand, if the enzyme remains in the serum rather than attaching to the red cells the reaction would not produce the fatal clumping. Meanwhile the allergy to the enzyme, even if severe, could be handled by other drugs...
Which would also suppress the immune system somewhat - in a hospital "superbug" environment. So artificial type-O will likely remain an emergency measure, and type-O donors will remain in demand.
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allergic reactions... (Score:2)
Re:Synthetic Blood (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, the initial reports from the trials failed to show even non-inferiority over saline, though there were multiple issues of coding errors by the 3rd party data analysis company, and they are in the process of reviewing the database to see if their conclusions were correct.
The work is very hard since you have to get FDA approval to do non-consent trials of an experimental procedure.
There are other procedures under development that use non-human blood as the hemoglobin source, but they are not to testing phases yet, and there are some additional problems that need to be solved to avoid rejection in those cases.
Re:Synthetic Blood (Score:4, Informative)
http://biomed.brown.edu/Courses/BI108/BI108_2005_G roups/10/webpages/HBOClink.htm [brown.edu]
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One problem with the synthetic blood is that it wasn't as efficient at oxygen transfer as real blood, and ISTR there were some issues with the body's ability to excrete it
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There was that stuff they had back in the 70s, can't remember the name any more. It was a form of liquid Teflon, I remember they showed a rat with a weight tied to one leg being dropped in a beaker full of the stuff (after it had been oxygenated) and apparently it stayed in there for several minutes and suffered no ill effects afterwards.
Oxygenated perfluorocarbons. For those interested in seeing it in action, watch The Abyss. The scene with the rat being submerged in the stuff was not a special effect.
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I remember reading about a synthetic blood that was being tested on the public in I believe some parts of New York through the ambulances. You also didn't have any choice if you wanted this synthetic blood either, you just got it or not depending on your luck.
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It's been tried various times (Google is your friend if you're so inclined). Doesn't seem to work for humans, there is a commercial product for dogs that isn't terribly expensive (about $80 per unit).
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Like this [newscientist.com]?
Also, the only benefit of having O- blood is a regular phone call from the Red Cross begging for a donation. Although you may not necessarily see that as a benefit, depending on your particular level of lonliness.
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Besides, in my state it's illegal to sell whole blood; you can sell plasma but
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Uh oh... (Score:5, Funny)
Blood type C (Score:3, Funny)
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All the more reason to round up the superstitious idiots in the world and turn them into an organ bank.
Re:dem Jap's is kuh-RAZY! (Score:5, Funny)
Diesel.
No RH, no problem... for me. (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, so not everyone would be a universal recipient, but most people would be. 85% of the US population (apologies to the international community.
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Sincerely,
Mr. AB+
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Thanks,
Mr. O-
The author of the article is confused about RH - (Score:3, Informative)
O negative, eh? (Score:5, Informative)
So this technology could literally save my life!
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O Negative is the preferred donor type, as (IIRC) anyone can accept it, but no other blood type works for us poor O Neg's.
O Rhesus +ve will work for O negs once. You're born with ABO antibodies but for all other antigens (including Rhesus antigen), you need an initial exposure to trigger antibody development. Therefore, anyone who's Rhesus negative can receive _one_ transfusion of Rhesus positive blood (providing its ABO crossmatched) without major risk of reaction. It's exceedingly bad practice to do this, but can be lifesaving in an emergency (i.e. no other Rhesus negative blood around).
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The situation would have to be pretty dire for that to be seriously considered. There's no good way to tell that a patient has *never* received incompatible blood before--there might've been an unnoticed slip-up in the past that could make this idea fatal.
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'Course, come to think of it, that'd probably take longer than getting your hands on the right blood...
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Hey, let's all donate! (Score:3, Informative)
Donating blood is very easy and doesn't take a whole lot of your time. Typically you're not going to be light-headed or anything after you do it. It's recommended that you eat hearty before and after you donate, but how hard is that?
On the plus side, if you donate blood you are helping save somebody's life. LET ME REPEAT THAT. The blood you donate will be used to try to save somebody's life. There is absolutely no reason
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This is true, but, except in the most extreme of shortages, this isn't an issue. Most hospitals, in an emergency will simply transfuse a person with O+ blood (O- for women of child bearing age). While giving an O-
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Please donate, you would be surprised at how many infants need blood transfusions (as well as many transplant recipients).
Bacterial names (Score:2)
Is it just me, or does anyone else not like the name Elizabethkingia meningosepticum? I don't have a problem with the Elizabethkingia, but the meningosepticum sounds bad, making me think Elizabeth King was not the discoverer but rather the Patient Zero.
Why can't they be more like astronomers who call things as they see t
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It's named after a scientist who first described this type of bacteria. [bacterio.cict.fr]
"Elizabethkingia Kim et al. 2005, gen. nov.
Type species: Elizabethkingia meningoseptica (King 1959) Kim et al. 2005.
Etymology: N.L. fem. n. Elizabethkingia, in honour of Elizabeth O. King, who first described bacteria associated with infant meningitis, notably [Flavobacterium] meningosepticum in 1959."
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Because biologists like to confuse people and sound important.
Bandying about drisophila melonagaster sounds smarter than saying fruit fly. But all it really means is "black bellied dew sucker" [answers.com]. Now that's intellectual!
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Blood made suitable for all (Score:5, Informative)
Scientists have discovered enzymes that can efficiently convert blood groups A, B and AB into the 'universal' O group -- which can be given to anyone but is always in short supply.
The two novel glycosidase enzymes were identified in bacteria by an international team led by Henrik Clausen of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. The researchers hope that the enzymes will both improve the erratic supplies of blood around the world, and also the safety of transfusions. Clinical trials to test the safety and effectiveness of their converted blood are being planned.
The ABO blood-type system is based on the presence or absence of the sugar-based antigens 'A' and 'B' on red blood cells. Type O blood cells have neither A nor B antigens, so may be safely transfused into anyone. But types A, B and AB blood do, and cause life-threatening immune reactions if they are given to patients with a different blood group. The bacterial glycosidase enzymes strip these antigens away from A, B and AB blood.
The idea of such antigen-stripping goes back to the early 1980s, with the discovery of an enzyme in coffee beans that removes B antigens from red blood cells1. Early-stage clinical trials showed that the converted blood could be safely transfused into individuals of different blood groups; no traces of enzyme or antigen remained to cause reactions2. But the enzyme reaction was far too inefficient to make large-scale conversion practical.
Clausen's team screened 2,500 extracts from different bacteria and fungi for their ability to cleave off A and B antigens. The newly discovered bacterial 'B' enzyme is nearly 1,000 times more efficient then the coffee-bean B enzyme -- the additional discovery of an enzyme to remove A antigens means that all blood types can now be converted. The work is reported in Nature Biotechnology3.
(snip)
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Using a bacterial enzyme to cleave the terminal sugars from the A and B type antigen totally makes sense. You're just cleaving an alpha 1-3 bond between either N-acetylgalactosamine or galactose and galactose. Bacteria commonly have enzymes to digest alpha bonds, so it would only be a matter of trial and error to find the right enzyme.
Duh (Score:5, Informative)
Duh. Rh factor is a combination of several different genes. Blood type isn't controlled by those.
Also, it should be noted that, unlike what several of the replies thus far seem to think, this won't change your blood type - it will only alter blood that has already been removed from the body for future transfusion. Your body will still produce blood of whatever type you normally produce. Also, it basically has the added implication of making more than just O neg the universal donor. After all, if I can 'strip' A, and B off of cells, then A neg, B neg, and AB neg also become universal donors.
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About 8% of the population is O-, and another 10% are one of A-, B-, AB-. O- is the only type of blood you can give a patient without know his blood type, so this would approximately double the supply of blood available for Emergency situations. There really isn't a shortage of any other blood type. O+ is one of the most common blood types (IIRC ~40% of the population is O+). Stripping the Rh factor, would actually be more useful because you could then convert the very common O+ to O-.
I am O- (Score:5, Funny)
You are O-... (Score:2)
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-l
I am AB+ (Score:2)
Awesome (Score:2)
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That's why it's called a blood donation.
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More than ABO and RhD blood groups (Score:5, Informative)
Whilst this potentially is a great step forward, as always with biomedical headlines, it's not the be-all and end-all.
ANDF? (Score:2)
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Fuzzy Types (Score:2, Informative)
Bad News for Vamps (Score:5, Funny)
In the Meantime (Score:5, Interesting)
So, in the meantime, everyone who is able should at least consider donating blood. It is fast, easy, and (nearly) painless. Many may object to the exclusion [wikipedia.org] criteria [participate.net] used by the Red Cross and other organizations, but the overwhelming majority of eligible donors simply do not give [givelife2.org]. Chances are good that, at some point in your life, you too will need a blood transfusion [givelife2.org].
Find a blood drive [givelife.org] near you.
Re:In the Meantime (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW - does anyone know if there is a publically availble (and layman-readable) list of medications which would cause your blood to be rejected? I usually try to schedule when I've not been taking anything for at least 2 weeks, but as one grows older the periods of time when I'm (a) available and (b) haven't taken a single medication for 2 weeks or more prior are starting to occur with lower frequency.
It's not that I mind going, but if I'm going to spend an hour and a half of my time, I'd rather not have some techician decide later that my bag goes in the trash 'cause I had heartburn last week.
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Don't worry about what's going to happen to the blood after you're done with it. After all, you're done with it. If it's suitable for use as blood, it will go to someone who might otherwise have bled to death. If it's not suitable in its current form, it may have the plasma removed and used, or it might go to some other technician to run some tests. (Like whether or not this enzyme can b
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I had the exact same thing happen to me, wife convinced me
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for common stuff, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, ASA, it has to be 3 days since you've taken them.
any medication that it specifically blood-borne (blood pressure, cholesterol medications, etc.) are automatic ineligibility.
anything that has a pregnancy category other than A or B is automatic ineligibility as well.
up here in Canada, you can find out the information about
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though i do think that their exclusion criteria need adjustment. i have not seen any relevant evidence that being homosexual creates any statistically significant increase in the risk of contracting AIDS or any other blood-transmittable STD and they're excluding a moderate number of donors from the pool. the "travel to Britain" part also strikes me as silly, as we have B
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I was excluded from giving blood because I have an elevated level of a liver enzyme in the blood that is symptomatic of Hepatitis. I don't have hepatitis; the elevated enzyme level is genetic, and is passed to the males in my family. Still, with full documentation of this, as well as multiple negative Hep tests, I was not allowed to give blood until several years ago.
The notice I received stated that due to a severe, l
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I'll consider donating blood, when doctors and hospitals consider giving blood transfusions at cost...
Have you ever donated to a canned-food drive, so that the charity organization could SELL that donated food to the poor at REDUCED COST?
If doctors/hospitals would like to continue to make a profit on my blood donation, so would I... If they offered even a trivial amount of cash, just $
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Umm... NOT from canned-food drives?
Thrift stores have 'junk' that people were going to throw out, anyway. I've never had any need to throw out a pint of blood, or nearly any canned-food.
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I.e. clothes you could potentially sell to someone yourself if you were so inclined.
They take your donation and go on to sell it. Just like with the blood drives.
There are several reasons they don't pay for blood, though I agree with you that they're probably specious. One reason is that they are afraid that payment will bring all the undesirables out of the wo
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Do you thing having a cash incentive to lie is likely to make more people tell the truth about whether they are eligible or not?
If you need a transfusion, do you want the unit that came from the junkie who lied on the form so they could get something to eat that day?
The safety of the blood supply goes way down when you start paying people, that's why it's not allowed in the US.
Anyone who "donates" and gets paid, the plasma isn't going to people, it goes to
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Rest assured, as soon as that exclusion criterion is revoked, I'll be the first in line.
I've already signed my organ donor card, as I suspect someone dying of kidney failure would rather risk the (low) chance of contracting vCJD than stay on dyalisis.
DRM'd blood (Score:2, Funny)
Look out for the RIAA!!
...And if the enzymes get into an A/B/AB person? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Would it matter? If having type O blood pumped directly into your veins is OK, what's the problem with having the blood in your veins turned into type O?
Type O Negative (Score:2, Redundant)
Breakthrough? (Score:2, Insightful)
A couple of answers... (Score:5, Insightful)
My day job is to run a blood bank.
The enzymes discussed in the article are the next step in 25+ years working toward the goal of making blood universally compatible. The enzymes are years and years away from routine use, if they ever do make it to market. Offhand, major questions that need to be addressed include: Does it *really* work? Is the process cost-effective at manufacturing scales? Is it safe? Does the enzyme affect other proteins so people make antibodies?
Conversion of non-O RBCs to group O RBCs will make them more widely compatible, and may alleviate the shortage of group O RBCs, but does not affect Rh compatibility or the compatibility of platelets or of FFP. We would still have shortages of these products even when the process is up and running, and, so, we still need people to donate.
There are a number of guesses, comments, and half-truths posted above. I'll do my best to answer specific (on-topic!) questions posted as replies to this comment.
Teidou.
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You're not far off!
In the US, the FDA establishes minimal eligibility criterea. Most health adults who are in reasonably good health (e.g. within 20% of their ideal body weight) are eligible to donate. Deferrals exist for viral hepatits, HIV, behaviour which places one at risk for HIV (e.g. exchanging money or drugs for sex), and some travel (e.g. an extended trip to rural South America gets a one year delay for possible risk of malaria).
Only a few medications defer one from donating; unfortunately, a
Being an O- donor... (Score:2)
So if I understand correctly, all blood can be made into type O, which anyone except O- will be able to use? Those of us with O- will still require only O-.
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if I'm understanding correctly, it makes any + type into O+ and any - type into O-, so O- will just need any negative type.
though this isn't counting the sackful of other compatibility factors (there are 29 currently recognized), so this is not an end-all-be-all solution.
This is gonna get me negative karma, but... (Score:2)
Who said communism is Utopia? (Score:2)
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Re:That's great until... (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't worry about it. This is only for Type-O transfusions. Since a transfusion doesn't change your blood type (it just supplements your existing plasma until your body can manufacture sufficient replacement quantities), you won't have to worry about those "new diseases". Unless you're normally O-negative, that is...
Re:Half solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Is half a problem not a problem?
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Obviously, you're not familiar with the *nix development model: Solve half the problem, and then pipe the result it to STDOUT.