blood donations

Ask yourself this question ~ “how would I feel receiving the blood of a person with a chronic disease?”. Sure, the medical community can tell you no problem but what might be discovered months from now?

I would assume if you have CIDP, you can’t donate blood. But what I was wondering if I should be encouraging everyone I know who is healthy to donate blood to help the supply of IVIG. Does IVIG come from regular blood cross blood donations, or is it something else? Sorry if this is a dumb question,

I use to donate blood regularly (31 times) and one time they called me to let me know about the next blood donor clinic and I told them about my CIDP and they looked into it. A few weeks later got a letter saying that I could not donate blood no more and be a bone marrow donor. So I am black listed more or less. I have A- blood type which is rare also.

I do not want to infect anybody by chance.

Sue

Deem — IVIG comes from plasma donations. It’s a much longer and more involved (and probably more painful) process than simple blood donations and the people who do it are usually either very committed to helping out, or getting paid for it 😉

Deem,
Donations of plasma dont come from regular red cross dontaion centers. The centers used are specially for donations used to get plasma products. These centers are are often located in areas that draw donors from low risk populations and therefore are often found in less populated areas, unfortunately. Most plasma donation centers belong to the Plasma Protein Therapeutics Association (PPTA), who have very strict guidelines and do audits on these collection points. When one commits to being a donor, it is a long term thing, not a once off. Donors go through [B]stringent questions, screening and testing[/B] – In fact the first two donations the donor gives does not get used to make sure all testing has been completed and everything is safe. Donors also have to have yearly physicals to ensure that things are still ‘safe’. Giving blood for plasma is similar to giving ‘normal’ blood, only thing is that, once the blood is drawn, the plasma is separated and the blood is returned to the body in a saline solution so that it can generate more plasma. Some patients donate at least once a week (plasma is replaced 24 – 48 hours once being taken out the body), and donation time is around 1.5 to 2 hours. Yes, a great deal of donors do it for the money, they spend a lot of time at the centers doing this, but without them, we wont have the product we need to help us.

I was told several times by my health care staff that donation of blood was out of the question. I would never be able to donate blood. They told me to donate my time as a volunteer. There is a shortage of those people too! So when I get feeling better that is one of the things I make sure I am going to do within my community.

Hello Deem,

Are you being treated with either IVIg or plasmapheresis? The guidelines are that you cannot donate blood if you have received a blood product within the past six months.

As for being a bone marrow donor, as Sue Watters said, you can’t. I used to be in the National Bone Marrow Donor program. Once I was diagnosed with CIDP, I told them about it and was removed from the list of potential donors.

By the way, I am not sure that plasma does not come from regular Red Cross donation centers. According to the Wikipedia article on the Red Cross, they supply over one quarter of the plasma in the US. I don’t think they have that many specialized donation centers. Further, the Red Cross [I]Practice Guidelines for Blood Transfusion[/I] never mentions whole blood transfusion. By implication, it must be rarely done anymore. According the booklet, red blood cells come from processed whole blood or from an apheresis donation (the “double red cells” donation); so too for platelets and plasma. Plasma intended to be processed into IVIg [I]might[/I] have to come from specialized centers (I don’t know the FDA guidelines), but plasma generally could come from any whole blood donation.

MarkEns

I had an opportunity to attend a meeting at the PPTA offices in Washington D.C. with other patient advocacy groups, as well as a number of pharmaceutical companies in November. I leared so much during that day – it really opened my eyes, I never realized what went in to the collection of Plasma. During one of the presentations, Jan Bult (who is the President I think) showed us pictures of some of the collection centers. He had some amazing stories to tell about some of the donors. We were given a presentation by one of the people who audit these centers – The audits take weeks and weeks, not days, to make sure that everything is done correctly. We were also taken through the donor screening process, from start to finish. They had tons of data for us, so much that I couldnt keep up writing it all down. PPTA is the ‘recognized’ Association to belong to and adheres to strinct standards – these guidelines and standards are adhered to internationally too. (It should be noted that not all plasma collection sites belong to PPTA) Most plasma products come from specialized collection centers, and the shortfall comes from the American Red Cross, so you are right Mark, some does come from the Red Cross. When I say collection centers, I mean the collection centers owned by independant companies, many of those belong to the Association such as Biolife Plasma, Biomat USA, ZLB etc. CSL Behring, Baxter and Octapharma are members too – I wrote those down because those were the ones I knew :). All in all, it was an exhausting day, but well worth all the information and discussion.