6 September 2022 (Tuesday) - Transfusion News Update

The Transfusion News email came in today… I was rather surprised to read the last article about artificial blood… I can remember being told that artificial blood (as in something that carries oxygen and carbon dioxide about) was ready for commercial production in 1981…

Mitapivat Trial Results in Adults with Pyruvate Kinase Deficiency Requiring Transfusions

August 31, 2022 Pyruvate kinase deficiency is a rare, congenital form of chronic hemolytic anemia. Current treatments for pyruvate kinase deficiency, including RBC transfusions and splenectomy, are supportive only and do not address the metabolic defect of the disease. Mitapivat, however, is the first of a new class of oral drugs that activates pyruvate kinase, the enzyme in the RBC responsible for catalyzing the last step of glycolysis and producing ATP necessary to maintain RBC health. [Read More]

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Results from Phase 1 Trial for Artificial Hemoglobin Vesicles

August 24, 2022 Advantages of artificial red blood cells (RBCs) include reduced risks of pathogens and alloimmunization and greater storage time compared to standard RBCs. Several artificial RBCs have been developed; however, they have been associated with higher risks of myocardial infarction and death in clinical trials. [Read More]

 

4 September 2022 (Sunday) - Target Cells

Target cells are red blood cells that have more cell membrane than is usual, which causes the cells to look like little targets.

I realised I’d not mentioned them in my atlas… I have now. You can see my atlas by clicking here.

2 September 2022 (Friday) - BTLP-TACT Exercise

 I sneaked in a cheeky BTLP-TACT over a lunch break… I had one case – an eighty-eight year-old woman under the vascular people requiring group & save having had a stroke.

Her cell group was AB, but there was a weak reaction in the A cells. That made the ABO group uninterpretable.

The Rh(D) group was Positive, and with the control clearly negative, bearing in mind the last one of these I did that made the Rh(D) group reportable.

The antibody screen was negative

It was with a sense of relief that I got the green light.

1 September 2022 (Thursday) - Measurement of Uncertainty

I signed up to the Westgard QC newsletter today having stumbled across their website. On it I found a rather interesting little essay on the measurement of uncertainty.

I’ve always known that when I repeat an assay I won’t get “exactly” the same result, but I will get a result which is “about the same” but how much “about” is acceptable?

 

For example… “A patient report shows serum rhubarb results on two samples collected a week apart as 3.1 mmol/L and 3.3 mmol/L; upper reference value: 3.0 mmol/L. The clinician asks the laboratory: Is the first result definitely high and is the second result really higher than the first? The laboratory can’t answer without having some quantitative knowledge about the measurement uncertainty associated with each of the results”

 

You can read the essay by clicking here.