Donated blood quickly loses some of its life-saving properties as an important gas dissipates, U.S. researchers said on Monday, in a finding that explains why many patients fare poorly after blood transfusions.
Researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, have found that nitric oxide in red blood cells is the key to transferring oxygen in the blood to tissues.
This gas appears to break down almost immediately after red blood cells leave the body, rendering much of the blood stored in blood banks impaired, said Dr. Jonathan Stamler, a Duke researcher whose work appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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