SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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
(Score: 3, Interesting) by KritonK on Thursday November 28 2019, @09:33AM (4 children)
Theoretically, one is not supposed to donate blood if they have taken any kind of medication (even aspirin), was sick, or has gone to the dentist during the previous week. In Greece, one has to fill in a rather extensive checklist about one's medical history before donating, and the supervising doctor, apart from asking for details about any "yes" replies, will ask you about the above points, even if you've answered "no". Of course, they have no way of knowing if you're lying, but at least they do some screening, to avoid getting contaminated blood.
BTW, kaffeine is not in that checklist!
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Thursday November 28 2019, @10:24AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @11:10AM
The former does not follow the latter.
I have had to fill this out too, in Canada. And that included medication. They just asked what was the medication and then they said "ok, that's no a problem".
The problem is with medication, *like* Aspirin, not with most other medicines. That is why you are to tell them what medicines you are taking and then they will tell you if you can donate or not.
"one is not supposed to donate blood if they have taken any kind of medication" is a very false statement.
https://blood.ca/en/blood/am-i-eligible/abcs-eligibility#medication [blood.ca]
(Score: 2) by seeprime on Thursday November 28 2019, @03:20PM
Aspirin is not allowed for 48 hours to donating blood since it disqualifies the blood for platelet use. I simply don't take any aspiring or at least 48 hours before donating. Most blood donations are not used in while blood transfusions. It's components are used.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @08:07AM
They'll take O negative no matter what I'm pretty sure, except for blood-bourne infections.
If you need an emgergency transfusion, a little alprazolam is the least of your worries.