In memoriam: Winifred M. Ashby 1879-1975

Vf, Fairbanks

doi:10.1182/blood.v46.6.977.977

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Since the development of highly specific isotope tracer techniques, such as 15 N-glycine and 51 Cr labeling tests, this lifespan has become widely accepted as the normal mean human RBC lifespan. Notwithstanding, the early erythrocyte survival experiments conducted with the Ashby method continue to be regarded as a milestone of erythrocyte physiology research [34]. Indeed, as shown in table 2, the normal mean human RBC lifespan obtained with a modified Levitt's CO breath test was 122 day in the original study [21] and 126 days in the present study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 52%

“…The first accurate method for determining RBC lifespan took advantage of emerging knowledge of the ABO blood-type system introduced by Winifred Ashby in 1919 [1,2]. At that time, it was widely believed that the nucleus-free RBC was fragile with a limited, than the lifespan of perhaps 2-3 weeks [4,34]. Ashby used anti-A and anti-B antiserum to measure the lifespan of type O RBCs that had been transfused into anemic type A or type B recipients and observed much longer RBC survival times than expected.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Human erythrocyte lifespan measured by Levitt’s CO breath test with newly developed automatic instrument

Zhang

Liu

et al. 2018

J. Breath Res.

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Existing standard techniques for erythrocyte (RBC) lifespan measurement, such as quantitation of labeling with isotopes or biotin, are cumbersome and time-consuming. Given that endogenous CO originates mainly from degraded RBCs, a team lead by Levitt developed a CO breath test to enable more efficient RBC lifespan estimation. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability of Levitt's CO breath test method with our newly developed automatic instrument. RBC lifespan measurements conducted by Levitt's CO breath test method were conducted in 109 healthy subjects and 91 patients with chronic hemolytic anemia. In healthy subjects, the RBC lifespan was 126 ± 26 days, similar to values obtained with classical standard labeling methods. RBC lifespan did not differ significantly between males and females or between juveniles and adults, and did not correlate with age. To our knowledge, this datum represents an RBC lifespan average for the largest sample to date. In subjects with hemolytic anemia, RBC lifespan was 29 ± 14 days, which is significantly shorter than that of the healthy subjects (p = 0.001). Using 75 days as a cut-off, diagnostic accuracy for hemolytic anemia in the present study sample was 100%. In conclusion, the present results indicate that Levitt's CO breath test is an ideal method for human RBC lifespan measurement, and the newly developed automatic instrument is reliable and convenient for clinical practice.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 52%