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Scientists create Plastic Blood

So we won't need to donate blood anymore? Sounds pretty nifty, assuming it doesn't cause any unforseen health problems like clogging up your arteries.
 
Artificial blood, stuff that more or less effectively mimics at least some of the functions of blood, has been around for a long time, but, aside from volume fillers, it's never been anywhere near as cost effective as the ready-made, human-donated kind.

My guess is that this stuff, which has not yet been tested on any living animal, will be in that same category.
 
Yep, oxygen carrying molecules, be they natural or artificial, are hard pressed to match hemoglobin. Information here about other oxygen carrying pigments: http://idiocentrism.com/hemoglobin.htm

That in mind, most artificial blood is based on hemoglobin (there's some based on the same chemical devilry that makes liquid breathing possibleish) in one way or another. That isn't a free ride mind you, injecting a bunch of saline with hemoglobin in it tends to have... unwanted side effects.

Long story short, it's best to use the real thing.
 
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Um, yes and no.

I'm pretty sure you can't get AIDS, CJD or any flavour of hepatitis from artificial blood. And in spite of all the crossmatching, errors and transfusion reactions still sometimes occur. And sometimes you need the blood so fast you can't wait for the cross-match. Artificial blood may be a better choice than grabbing some O-.

Then there's storage. Real blood has a pretty short shelf life in the fridge. If artificial blood can be stored for long periods, especially if it can be stored at ambient temperature - yes!

And from a veterinary perspective, where it's helluva hard to get blood from the right species when you need it, if it tests out on animals, woo-hoo!!! (Yes, I know there's a product already available, oxyglobin, I'm assuming this report is about something better.)

Rolfe.
 
It's newish because it uses imitation hemoglobin, rather than polymerizing the real thing. As Rolfe says, if it's cheaper and easier on kidneys than existing artificial bloods, it may amount to something useful.
 
I’m not sure if the advantage is that great... :wackyunsure:

The really urgent cases ( trauma with abdominal / thoracic aortic rupture, massive blood loss from severed limbs) you still start with 6 bags of packed cells (washed red blood cells), 4 bags of fresh frozen plasma and one bag of thrombocytes (= blood platelets), but the first bag is still colloids to maintain the volume and prevent shock. The total volume is decreased… So after replenishing the total volume with crystalloid or colloid solutions, you get a deficit in the haematocrit, this still takes some time and by that time either hypovolemic shock has already set in (requiring vasoconstrictors) or peripheral vasoconstriction has redistributed the remaining blood to the vital organs. Basically, you never start with blood first. Full blood or packed cells are not a good way to counter hypovolemia in an acute situation and take far too much time to administer. Colloids are a better way to go in my opinion. As long as your hematocrit (Hct) remains above 0.27 (striving for 0.30) you are fine and often a decrease in Haemoglobin or Hct level is more an indication of the effort of fighting hypovolemia then of actual blood loss.

A calculation of the DO2 (=oxygen delivery) can often help you out to see if you really need to administer blood (often available as a standard in ICU monitoring equipment ) :wackycool:

This also means you have time to cross-match the blood. If you really do run out of time this still only means one or two bags of O-, so transfusion reactions due to mismatch in some blood subtype will usually remain limited.

If you really need to give packed cells fast to a patient with a severed aorta or severely traumatized liver, there are ways to administer this using a “Level One” infusion machine, pumping several bags of blood through (the cordis of) a central catheter. You will need to place the catheter first or else you will never be able to administer this fast. So you still start with colloid or crystalloid solutions while you are placing the catheter.
There are also other ways to give blood back to the patient using technology such as that in “Cell Saver” in the operating room.

I think the only real benefit is that you can limit the chance of transmitting disease, but the quality and cost of artificial blood doesn’t compare to having a good blood bank with qualified personnel and good quality control. Getting rid of natural blood and using artificial blood does not help you very much when fighting the transmission of viruses, since you often have to use fresh frozen plasma and thrombocytes as well to maintain a normal PT (which will rise due to dilution of coagulation factors, meaning it will take more time for your blood to clot) and normal thrombocyte count.

The separation of cells and plasma is done by centrifugation and does not necessarily guarantee that no viruses can be transmitted as far as I know, but I could be wrong. I think testing of patient or blood is done to ensure that. Using natural blood also has a lot of other advantages as well, getting plasma, thrombocytes , immunoglobulins from the collected blood. On a related subject, choosing an artificial alternative will probably make collection of blood and preparation of blood products more expensive…

So although I welcome the new advances in research, I’m not that confident artificial blood will replace or even be a very competitive alternative to the real thing. Even natural blood is still not cheap, with a cost of about one thousand dollars for 2 bags. If artificial blood will turn out to be a good alternative, then only in very limited cases…:wackyunsure:

I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope we can find an improvement… :wackycute:

SYL :wackysmile:
 
OMIGOSH! That is SO NOT natural :jaw-dropp *evil laugh*

Well, it hasn't been tested on any animals yet, so I'm thinking this is still many years off. My big question is about the plastic blood's ability to transport nutrition and wastes too. You know, the blood has several jobs to do, and bringing oxygen around is only one of them. If it's going to be in the body for a few days, then it needs to do all of its jobs effectively.
 
Eos of the Eons said:
OMIGOSH! That is SO NOT natural :jaw-dropp *evil laugh*

Well, it hasn't been tested on any animals yet, so I'm thinking this is still many years off. My big question is about the plastic blood's ability to transport nutrition and wastes too. You know, the blood has several jobs to do, and bringing oxygen around is only one of them. If it's going to be in the body for a few days, then it needs to do all of its jobs effectively.
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Well, haemoglobin takes care of the waste (CO2) for the most part, and the nutrition (glucose,other sugars, lipids) is not really transported by red blood cells. :wackyhuh:

The half life of the artificial blood is more of a problem. As stated earlier by neutrino_cannon, haemoglobin breakdown has a lot of side effects. When you start to turn yellow and have an access of free iron in your blood, your liver, lungs, kidneys… they all start to protest.

If the half life of artificial blood could be improved, if the cost could be lowered and there would be good alternatives to improve clotting (besides the few existing ones), it could be a good alternative to help Jehova’s Witnesses.
The whole blood administration thing is often a big problem, when you are confronted with a Jehova’s Witness. I’m not sure, but maybe this could be a solution… :wackycute:

SYL :wackysmile:
 
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SYLVESTER1592 said:
Well, haemoglobin takes care of the waste (CO2) for the most part, and the nutrition (glucose,other sugars, lipids) is not really transported by red blood cells. :wackyhuh:

The half life of the artificial blood is more of a problem. As stated earlier by neutrino_cannon, haemoglobin breakdown has a lot of side effects. When you start to turn yellow and have an access of free iron in your blood, your liver, lungs, kidneys… they all start to protest.

If the half life of artificial blood could be improved, if the cost could be lowered and there would be good alternatives to improve clotting (besides the few existing ones), it could be a good alternative to help Jehova’s Witnesses.
The whole blood administration thing is often a big problem, when you are confronted with a Jehova’s Witness. I’m not sure, but maybe this could be a solution… :wackycute:

SYL :wackysmile:
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I am hoping plastic blood is not just red blood cells, but also includes the other components of blood (plasma, clotting agents, etc.) that does all the jobs of blood. How long could we survive with plastic blood if it doesn't do all the jobs of regular blood? Maybe our body can still provide enough white blood cells, platelets, etc., and we could survive with the plastic blood just being plasma and red blood cells? Can this plastic blood transport waste products just as well as regular blood, or at least adequately for a few days?

Does this new plastic blood include the half-life problem?

Basically, there is not enough information on this new product to have a serious discussion, but hopefully some day there will be. The benefits would be priceless.
 
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Eos of the Eons said:
I am hoping plastic blood is not just red blood cells, but also includes the other components of blood (plasma, clotting agents, etc.) that does all the jobs of blood. How long could we survive with plastic blood if it doesn't do all the jobs of regular blood? Maybe our body can still provide enough white blood cells, platelets, etc., and we could survive with the plastic blood just being plasma and red blood cells? Can this plastic blood transport waste products just as well as regular blood, or at least adequately for a few days?

Does this new plastic blood include the half-life problem?

Basically, there is not enough information on this new product to have a serious discussion, but hopefully some day there will be. The benefits would be priceless.
Click to expand...

Well, yes, I do think they mean artificial red blood cells. Whole blood is kind of rare these days. :wackycute:

We don’t often use it. More often we use specific parts of blood to supplement. The “plastic blood “ is made to replace a specific part of the blood, the red blood cells. The plasma is made up of different parts, proteins such as albumin, immunoglobulins, protein packaged lipids, nutrients … They are all attributed by different parts of the body. White blood cells and platelets are mostly the product of the bone marrow (not regarding lymphoid tissue). The platelets are important in the case of massive blood loss and often you need to add those in case of a large transfusion. The white blood cells are less of a problem, they are less predominant and can be diluted to a large extent as long as you have functional bone marrow and lymphoid tissue. The dilution of blood clotting factors is often a problem, that’s why sometimes blood plasma is administered, but there are medications that work as well and if all else fails there are concentrated blood clotting factors available.

Normal red blood cells survive for about 120 days (64 days half life) and take about 7 days to mature. For artificial blood to be valuable it has to survive for (at least) those 7 days. Unfortunately when it breaks down the end products of haemoglobin are broken down to be (predominantly) excreted in bile. When the capacity to do this is exceeded, you retain this product in your body and you start to turn yellow (something you often see in newborn babies). The excess of free iron has to be redistributed as well. This doesn’t always work out well for other organs which have a lot of small (capillary) blood vessels.

Haemoglobin is mostly responsible for the pH level of your blood and CO2/O2 exchange. This is the main function of your red blood cells.

So yes, I think you could survive for a few days with these artificial red blood cells, question is if it is any better than real blood and you are right that it needs adequate testing for safety and efficacy. I agree that only after successful tests, a useful discussion could be conducted on the merits and clinical use of this artificial blood. :wackyyes:

Even if it is effective, I have my doubt whether it could be as good as real red blood cells and still the other blood components would probably eliminate any benefits attributed by the artificial red blood cells. :wackyunsure:

SYL :wackysmile:
 
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