Re: Blood or Platelet Donation

[Guest guest]

I have donated blood before. Certain people do not qualify to be donors. It

would certainly raise a lot of " eyebrows " if my donated blood could be the cause

of someone else's achalasia. Probably would not even be a " blip " on the screen.

 

I would rather the converse of your example being true, that I receive a blood

transfusion from a non-achalasia donor and it brings back my peristalsys.

 

From: Barb C. <bagwoman52@...>

Subject: Blood or Platelet Donation

achalasia

Date: Tuesday, August 16, 2011, 9:43 PM

 

Does anyone in this group have any information on the possible danger of

donating blood or platelets? I am a regular donor and do not want to risk

infecting anyone with this mystery condition. Since there is no " known " cause of

this disease, only speculation, I was just wondering if there was a possibility

of hurting more than helping someone who is already in need of a health miracle.

Thank you for any information.

A platelet LifeSaver....Barb

[Guest guest]

If achalasia were contagious, it wouldn't be a rare disease.

Look at HIV/AIDS, something that is transmitted by contact with blood/bodily

fluids. Or Hepatitis B. Or Hepatitis C. Or West Nile Virus or Malaria (which

are generally not directly transmitted from person to person, but rather are

" vector-borne " when a mosquito bites an infected person and then transmits the

disease to the next person they bite).

If achalasia could be " caught " via blood transmission, EVERYONE would recognize

its name immediately (just like everyone immediately recognizes the names of all

the diseases in the previous paragraph). It would also tend to " infect " every

member of a household -- spouse-to-spouse or mother-to-baby transmission.

In other words -- donate blood as often as you safely can. With all the reasons

that people are deferred for blood donation these days (tattoos, piercings,

medications, street drugs, travel in certain regions, etc.), every person who

can safely donate is needed more than ever.

Debbi in Michigan

aka Pepto-Deb

[Guest guest]

Barb wrote:

>

> Does anyone in this group have any information on

>the possible danger of donating blood or platelets?

>

There is this:

Serum from achalasia patients alters neurochemical coding

in the myenteric plexus and

nitric oxide mediated motor response in normal human fundus

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1856095/

" Serum from achalasia patients can induce phenotypic and functional changes

which reproduce the characteristics of the disease. "

That research was done on tissue samples and I don't know of any followup

research. This suggest that donated serum could cause some changes in the

recipient but it is not clear how much blood or platelets would be needed to

cause these changes. When donating platelets much of the rest of the blood is

separated from the platelets. How well depends on the method used but in any

case there would be less of the serum in the platelet donation.

notan