3/23/2021 0 Comments Rare Blood Types
To find a matching blood type for a unique patient in need, the best outcomes are nearly always found from a donor within the same ethnic population to which the patient belongs.Moulds Laboratories Rare Donor Program Education Financial Gifts Contribute Programs.
Donors with these unique characteristics are especially important to patients who have complex blood compatibility issues. As a result of our efforts in donor screening, LifeShare has been extremely successful in providing for the needs of our patient population as well as the needs of many problematic patients across the country. LifeShare is a major contributor to the American Rare Donor Program with which we have collaborated to send hundreds of rare units across the US and even overseas. LifeShare also takes on special cases for patients in other states where we act as the primary supplier for treatment regimens involving patients with rare blood requirements. ![]() By having a safe and adequate blood supply available to the community, it allows us to screen and save rare blood units for those patients who specifically require them. Blood is an invaluable commodity with limited resources and the supply must be managed carefully. Most patients will not produce red cell antibodies and wont require the use of specially screened blood. However, all it takes is one patient with a special need to make our rare donor program worthwhile. When an antigen is found on the red blood cells of most people, it is called a high-incidence antigen. When an antigen has been shown to be absent from most people, it is called a low-incidence antigen. When foreign substances enter the body, the immune system may make antibodies to those substances, but it is not guaranteed. Individuals, who produce an antibody or antibodies, are called Responders. The incidence of Responders are generally only about 3 in the general population, so most people are never going to make any antibodies and will not require anything special regarding blood transfusion even if they are found to be negative for a high-incidence antigen. Repeated exposure to different blood cells other than your own (i.e., by transfusion or pregnancy) will increase the chance of antibody production. Patients who are regularly transfused as a part of treatment, thus, repeatedly exposed to many different types of red blood cells, such as Sickle Cell or Thalassemia patients, are more likely to produce antibodies while persons transfused once or twice in a lifetime are not as likely. Sickle Cell Disease in itself is considered a hyper-immune condition which also enhances the likelihood of antibody production, in these patients. In rare cases, the antibody a patient produces reacts with almost all donor cells it comes in contact with and only a small percentage of the population (usually less than 1) will end up being an acceptable transfusion match for the patient. This results from a patient producing multiple antibodies to several common antigens or an antibody to a high incidence antigen. ![]() Today, DNA testing provides a cost-effective complimentary tool for identifying rare donors and one day it may overtake traditional screening as the method of choice for this testing. LifeShare staff have currently screened over 90,000 donors for rare blood types (beyond A, B, and O using both traditional and DNA testing), classifying close to a thousand of those as rare donors.
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