Effects of leukoreduction on storage lesions in whole blood and blood components of dogs

Abstract

Background: Leukoreduction is a routine procedure in human transfusion medicine but is uncommon in veterinary. Objectives: To evaluate the effect of leukoreduction on the quality of canine whole blood (WB) and blood products during storage. Animals: Ten canine blood donors. Methods: This is a case series study. An amount of 450 mL of blood was collected from each dog. Five WB and 5 packed red blood cells (pRBC) bags were divided into 2 units each: leukoreduced (LR) and non-leukoreduced (nLR). RBC count, erythrocytes' mean osmotic fragility (MOF), 2,3-diphosphoglycerate (2,3-DPG), adenosine triphosphate (ATP), percentage of hemolysis, potassium (K), lactate, glucose, and cytokines were measured weekly from day of donation (T0) to day 35 (T35); pH, coagulation times, and clotting factors were evaluated at T0 and T35 from WB and in fresh frozen plasma after 1 year of storage.

Effect of Leukoreduction on Hematobiochemical Parameters and Storage Hemolysis in Canine Whole Blood Units

“…Our results are partly in contrast with those reported by other authors that record the slight increase of the MCV from T0 to T35 [48]. In our study, both MCV and Hct trends could be explained with the transformation of red blood cells into echinocytes starting from the 14th day of storage.…”

“…In the present study, hemolysis was determined using the same formula applied in other human and veterinary studies [2,6,40,48,49,56]. In all the units, the degree of hemolysis progressively increased (p < 0.05) during the storage time, reaching the maximum level close to 1% at the 42nd day of storage (Figure 11).…”

“…This could explain the increase in the volume of the RBC other than the hypocromia and the anisocytosis found [1]. Moreover, the increase in the MCV was more pronounced in unfiltered units, suggesting that some products of leukocyte disintegration may be involved to affect RBC membrane properties [33,48].…”

“…A unit of whole blood generally contains ≥1 to 10 × 10 9 WBC. In human transfusion medicine, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) establishes that a blood component can be defined as leukoreduced when the concentration of white blood cells is <5.0 × 10 6 with 85% recovery of original RBC content [47] and <1 × 10 6 WBC/unit is the standard of the Council of Europe [3,48]. In our study, leukoreduction was effective since filtration was under the FDA standards, removing 99.69% leukocytes and 94.91% platelets from the whole blood units and ensuring the 98.30% RBC recovery in LRWB units compared to the nLRWB units.…”

“…The increase in the MCV values indicates RBC swelling; it seems that there is a deregulated mechanism of red blood cell volume. Particularly, it is documented that there is an insufficiency of the adenosine-5 -triphosphate (ATP)-dependent Na−K pumps of the RBC membrane which cannot work properly under cold storage conditions [33,48]. This could explain the increase in the volume of the RBC other than the hypocromia and the anisocytosis found [1].…”