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A study has found an increased chance of mortality of men who received blood donated from previously pregnant women:
Each time health care workers grab a pint of blood for an emergency transfusion, they make sure the donor and recipient have compatible blood types. But they do not pay attention to the donor's sex. A new study raises questions as to whether that should change.
In the first large study to look at how blood transfusions from previously pregnant women affect recipients' health, researchers discovered men under 50 were 1.5 times more likely to die in the three years following a transfusion if they received a red blood cell transfusion from a woman donor who had ever been pregnant. This amounts to a 2 percent increase in overall mortality each year. Female recipients, however, did not appear to face an elevated risk. The study [DOI: 10.1001/jama.2017.14825] [DX] of more than 42,000 transfusion patients in the Netherlands was published Tuesday in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association.
The American Red Cross and the researchers themselves were quick to say the study is not definitive enough to change the current practice of matching red blood cell donors to recipients. But if this explosive finding is confirmed with future studies, it could transform the way blood is matched—and it would suggest millions of transfusion patients worldwide have died prematurely. "If this turns out to be the truth, it's both biologically interesting and extremely clinically relevant," says Gustaf Edgren, an expert who was not involved in the study but co-wrote an editorial about it. "We certainly need to find out what's going on." Edgren, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute and a hematologist at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, says his own research [DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.0890] [DX] suggests the donor's sex makes no difference to the transfused patient. "Our data is really not compatible with this finding," he says.
Also at Reuters, Medscape, and Stat News.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday October 19 2017, @04:49AM (17 children)
Die of what?
The linked article says: All-cause mortality during follow-up.
So the male wounded soldier goes back to the front lines, the lumber jack goes back to logging and the female professional goes back to her calculations or her law practice.
The small numbers involved in this study could be overwhelmed by the level of risks incurred by virtue of their profession.
There is a wide disparity between male and female mortality [nih.gov] due to injury.
----
The other interesting thing is how few female blood dinners there are:
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Thursday October 19 2017, @04:58AM (1 child)
Draculan slip?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by aristarchus on Thursday October 19 2017, @06:18AM
Sorry, got to say it! With frojack, one can never be sure.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Thursday October 19 2017, @05:07AM (9 children)
If I'm reading it right, ~13,144 men got blood from a man, ~896 men got blood from an ever-pregnant woman, ~896 men got blood from a never-pregnant woman. It could be statistical noise, but we've seen studies with much smaller sample sizes.
The effect could disappear in follow-up studies, or this could be enough of a clue to find a possible cause (hormone imbalance in the donated blood, for instance).
This is discussed in the comments on Stat News. An Anon had this to say:
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday October 19 2017, @05:25AM (4 children)
When making a point about an error, you should ensure that your own writing is correct. That should be '[sic]'.
Now, someone else will point out the mistake (or mistakes) that I made in my posting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @05:29AM (1 child)
Punctuation goes inside quotation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @08:21AM
If you're a crazy person yes.
If you want to have some order in your thoughts, you realize that the quotation is a smaller part of a whole (i.e. the full sentence), and therefore it should be enveloped in the whole, i.e. the sentence-relevant punctuation goes OUTSIDE the quotation.
For pure dialogue, the punctuation goes inside the quotation because it is part of the quoted communication.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday October 19 2017, @05:47AM (1 child)
Here's the mistake in your post: WHOOOOOOOOSH.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by Whoever on Thursday October 19 2017, @02:18PM
It has to be funny before a "Whooosh" is appropriate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @06:15AM (1 child)
If it doesn't disappear expect to see similar studies performed on transgender people (assuming those studies don't already exist). What's the death rates of transforming people?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @06:28AM
You stupid fucking (or not, apparently) cuckservative!! Shirley you gnow that the immunity granted to mothers is from the leakage of fetal stem cells through the placental wall. Oh, you did not know that? You must be a stupid conservative, denying science all the time, and never reading anything that might force you to admit you are wrong, and that you are wrong because you are stupid.
So, it is not surprising that the blood of mothers would confer the same benefits on the donors of these mother's blood? Or do we have to take khallow out to the woodshed again to give him some "education"?
(And, oh, for you Catholic pedophile fucks, it does not matter whether the woman carried to term or not, the same benefits devolve regardless of your fucking homosexual puritan boy-buggering moral attitude towards women. I hear the Virgin Mary has joined the "Me, too" thing on Twitter! Alleujah! )
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @12:10PM
[quote]If I'm reading it right, ~13,144 men got blood from a man, ~896 men got blood from an ever-pregnant woman, ~896 men got blood from a never-pregnant woman. It could be statistical noise, but we've seen studies with much smaller sample sizes.
The effect could disappear in follow-up studies, or this could be enough of a clue to find a possible cause (hormone imbalance in the donated blood, for instance).[/quote]
Isn't that a bit of the point of statistics... taking out the noise from your data set? Is the experimental setup and statistical analysis (testing is just one part of the analysis) were correctly performed, this should be confirmed. The 1.5x difference is quite big. The total recorded amount of deaths in this research is 3969, so 1.5x would result in at least a few dozen extra deaths in that one class compared to the others. Also, the fact that the effect doesn't surface in women receiving the same blood, makes this quite convincing for me.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday October 19 2017, @08:52PM
No, followup studies pretty much cease when the patient dies.
The numbers you quoted address the population, however the claimed results were not based on the whole population, but only those that died within three years.
They took all the deaths, traced it back to transfusions and if even one transfusion was from a previously pregnant woman they fell into that cohort.
(Most people getting a transfusion get more than one bag, and the bags are not matched for source. So its highly likely that anyone who got blood from a previously-pregnant woman also got blood from other women or men, unless they only ever needed exactly one bag).
Also, your figures for female donations in the Netherlands does not appear to have been the case in this study. Female sourced blood was a very small percentage here.
There are a lot of problems with this study. Until they go back and remove accidental deaths, or intentional deaths (homicides/suicides/drug ODs) the whole thing is suspect.
If they can test for a causal route, a difference in the blood (say for example: once-pregnant female blood carrying fewer/different immunity agents due to the need to tolerate a foreign "infection" for 9 months) then there would be a vector that they could study.
But as long as non-disease-related deaths are included it seems pretty hokey. And the other guys study doesn't support it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Thursday October 19 2017, @06:52AM (4 children)
But then, oh wise and merciful frojack, there are many female blood diners, especially amoungst the mosquito species, where it almost exclusively (well, not almost) the female of the species that dines on blood! And not to mention, spread Dengue, West Nile, Zika, malaria, and a whole host of nastly blood bourne diseases! So what are we to make of this? Women giveth, and females taketh away-eth? Or are you just pumping your usual uncertainty concern trolling, of which you are a past master here on SolylentNews! I have never seen anyone so subtly inject something like this into a discussion like this before. Unless it was about Anthropogenic Global Climate Change brought about by the Blood of our Mothers! Seriously, frojack, is this not a bit much, even for you? Not saying it is not effective, but is it moral?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @08:24AM (1 child)
I may agree with your dislike of him, but you're being an asshole. It was an honest typo, get over it already.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Thursday October 19 2017, @08:51AM
Whatever are you talking about? Frojack is my friend! Public record, check it out. And besides, typos are often either very revealing, or the basis for wonderful new discoveries! Surely you share my optimism? (Oh, BTW, all the assholes are actually over in the "naked eye Uranus" thread at the moment, so none here now, sorry. )
(Score: 5, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday October 19 2017, @04:31PM (1 child)
There once was a vampire named Mabel
Whose cycle was incredibly stable
Come ev'ry full moon
She'd pull out a spoon
And drink herself under the table
(All the best limericks are dirty :D)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @09:46PM
There was a young lady from Bude
Who went for a swim in the lake
A man in a punt
Stuck an oar up her nose
And said, "It really is very dangerous to swim in here."