BLOOD TRANSFUSION

It May Be Risky for Men to Receive Blood Donations From Women?

Just to please everyone and satisfy our ego, we in India go on telling ‘there is no difference between a male and a female human body and mind’. There are huge differences between two sexes; I will not go into controversy.

                                                Our topic will be confined to blood transfusion. A male person receiving whole blood or plasma of a female donor will have some detrimental effect hence it’s better to give female blood or plasma to a female patient only and male blood can be transfused to both sexes. In Olympic if a lady is transfused with healthy male blood then she will have better timing. Marathon runner get transfused with their own blood (auto transfusion) stored few days before the event. Blood transfusion is not as safe as the doctors and patients think! The big difference in composition in male and female blood is in the ‘Endocrinal’ aspect, presence and absence and levels of certain sex hormones. The levels may show fluctuations even due to the age too, i.e. estrogen levels in young females is different than that of a menopausal female or males or pregnant females, or difference in levels of testosterone in young adult males and old males etc. WBC and platelet counts are more in males than females who have more plasma than other blood components. In menstruating females the blood chemistry changes from day to day hence they are not included in new drug trials.

Men and women are biologically different, and that may apply to their blood as well — at least for women who have been pregnant. The big difference between an adult female and male is, a male can neither get pregnant nor deliver a child!

In a study published in JAMA, researchers from the Netherlands studied more than 31,000 people who received blood transfusions at six Dutch hospitals from 2005 to 2015. They tracked whether the recipients had received blood from male donors, female donors who had never been pregnant or female donors who had been pregnant. The researchers then analyzed death rates for three years. Those who received female plasma had higher death rate!

Friends it’s just for information sake this article is loaded in face book. Enjoy reading controversy in medicine. Some may agree and others may not. If you have observed your wife closely she became quite different once her period stopped. Actually they become good officers once they get past 45 land mark?

Sanjoy Kumar Satpathy: M.D

PS: My eldest sister received her own blood after the hysterectomy surgery done by a lady doctor of repute.That was the first auto transfusion at IspatGeneral Hospital,Rourkela—may be in Odisha, is not sure. She is now 82 and leading healthy life.