why can’t people with anemia (not enough iron in blood) get blood transfers from donors who have hemochromatosis (too much iron in blood)?
In: Biology
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Short answer – they can and do.
Longer answer – while blood transfusions take care of the acute problem, it’s not a viable long-term solution; it is at best a temporary fix. Now, if the anemia is caused by sudden blood loss following an injury, that’s fine and dandy, there shouldn’t be a lasting issue at that point, but if you have some underlying condition causing the lack of blood iron, that will need to be treated, rather than merely topping up the red blood cells regularly. It can be likened with a serious oil leak in your car; pouring gallon after gallon of oil into it will keep it running, but it won’t fix the problem, and it’ll get ridiculously expensive in the long run for ultimately no benefit.
It’s less expensive to give iron supplements and if they are not tolerated well then iron infusions can be very helpful. My SO is chronically anaemic and iron supplements of any kind make her very ill so they pump it into her when her iron drops below a certain level.
I take Iron supplements and have received iron infusions in the past. It was for about 6 weeks, every week for a couple of hours a week. I didn’t enjoy it but it made me feel better.
Blood doesn’t seem like the most sustainable source for anemic folks like me when there’s infusions and supplements you can take. Not to mention eating iron rich foods.
In an emergency, they could (assuming the blood bank accepts donors with hemochromatosis – the American Red Cross does not).
But the bigger reason not to do this is that there are significantly easier and less invasive ways of treating most forms of anemia. Blood is a scarce resource, and blood transfusions are not a risk-free procedure. Every unnecessary blood transfusion risks generating immunity against the hundreds of blood group antigens that are not a match between the donor and recipient.
Anemia actually isn’t just low iron, there is IDA (iron deficiency anemia) but there is also a whole host of other types like aplastic anemia, sickle cell anemia, anemias that are vitamin dependent, and so much more!
I worked in a clinic that did phlebotomies for people with hemochromatosis. We looked in to this. The ferritin is a protein and in the massive quantities that our patients had, the blood would likely cause a reaction, possibly like anaphylaxis, in the recipient. Once someone was within range, they could donate blood again, if they only needed it every 56 days. More often and we had to do it.
My sister has iron infusions every now and then. No need for blood transfusion, just iron via IV.
Generally, Anemias can be a disease, but much more often they are a symptom of an underlying disease.
Iron deficiency anemias are commonly due to an unknown bleeding. So replacing lost blood doesn’t fix the underlying problem.
You can’t fix a boat taking in water by scooping out the water. But you can get enough time to fix the boat if you scoop out the water first.
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