Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine will participate in a four-year, $2.8 million grant to study the fragility of stored transfusion blood.
The lead researchers will be at the medical school at the University of Pittsburgh.
The study will focus on why the quality of stored transfusion blood degrades over time and how to resolve the problem. The degradation has been associated with increased risk for cardiovascular events and organ failure, particularly among compromised patients who receive multiple units of aged blood.
"There is strong evidence that red blood cells lose some of their enzyme function and have a shortened life span during the time they are banked," said Dr. Mark Gladwin, the director of the Vascular Medicine Institute at Pittsburgh.
Dr. Daniel Kim Shapiro, the director of the Translational Science Center at Wake Forest, is a co-principal investigator in the study.
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