Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Wednesday November 27 2019, @11:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the Dracula-was-right-all-along dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

We love coffee, tea, chocolate and soft drinks so much, caffeine is literally in our blood

In conducting mass spectrometry research, Richard van Breemen and Luying Chen worked with various biomedical suppliers to purchase 18 batches of supposedly pure human blood serum pooled from multiple donors. Biomedical suppliers get their blood from blood banks, who pass along inventory that's nearing its expiration date.

All 18 batches tested positive for caffeine. Also, in many of the samples the researchers found traces of cough medicine and an anti-anxiety drug. The findings point to the potential for contaminated blood transfusions, and also suggest that blood used in research isn't necessarily pure.

"From a 'contamination' standpoint, caffeine is not a big worry for patients, though it may be a commentary on current society," said Chen, a Ph.D. student. "But the other drugs being in there could be an issue for patients, as well as posing a problem for those of us doing this type of research because it's hard to get clean blood samples."

[...] In addition to caffeine, the research also involved testing pooled serum for alprazolam, an anti-anxiety medicine sold under the trade name Xanax; dextromethorphan, an over-the-counter cough suppressant; and tolbutamide, a medicine used to treat type 2 diabetes.

[...] All of the pooled serum was free of tolbutamide, but eight samples contained dextromethorphan and 13 contained alprazolam -- possibly meaning that if you ever need a blood transfusion, your odds of also receiving caffeine, cough medicine and an anti-anxiety drug are pretty good.

"The study leads you in that direction, though without doing a comprehensive survey of vendors and blood banks we can only speculate on how widespread the problem is," said van Breemen, the director of OSU's Linus Pauling Institute. "Another thing to consider is that we found drugs that we just happened to be looking for in doing the drug interaction assay validation -- how many others are in there too that we weren't looking for?"

Journal Reference: Luying Chen, Richard B. van Breemen. Validation of a sensitive UHPLC-MS/MS method for cytochrome P450 probe substrates caffeine, tolbutamide, dextromethorphan, and alprazolam in human serum reveals drug contamination of serum used for research. Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, 2019; 112983 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpba.2019.112983


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @12:56AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @12:56AM (#925498)

    OK, so we're sincerely curious...

    Please do tell us about your "PTSD."

    The Internet must know.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @01:08AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @01:08AM (#925500)

    November 8 2016, Trump was elected.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @01:41AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @01:41AM (#925511)

      It's really not even funny and instead just so worn out and exhausting. Technically it would be considered Traumatic Stress Syndrome since "Post" would imply in the past. Please stop trying to steer every topic into something god damn political. I don't want to hear any juvenile remarks about "caffeinated covefefe" either. Oh you're just so clever!!! Seriously, it's not the slightest bit interesting.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @02:17AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @02:17AM (#925519)

        Well, GP sure found your trigger.

        "OMG muh Safe Space!!1111111!!1 Where is muh Safe Space???"

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 28 2019, @01:01PM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday November 28 2019, @01:01PM (#925624) Journal

        Technically it would be considered Traumatic Stress Syndrome since "Post" would imply in the past.

        Wait, that election is not in the past? And I thought Trump is already president. Seems the media have all been lying to me the whole time! ;-)

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @04:26PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @04:26PM (#925669)

        You can never understand how bad PTSD can be unless you experience it yourself.