METHODS TO IMPROVE QUALITY OF STORED BLOOD

Abstract

1. ABSTRACT Blood transfusion is common to the entire medical regimen now-a-days. Storing blood and blood components is very important in clinical and medical purposes. Patients with major operations or traumatic accidents need to replenish the blood loss and thus need a supply from an external source. During storage, various metabolic, structural and morphological changes called the storage lesions plays role in reducing the life of the blood. So, over the time various efforts have been made to increase the shelf life of blood switching from glass bottles to plastic bags and addition of various anticoagulants have also been reported. Even with the most updated storage method blood can no longer be stored for more than six weeks. So major challenges faced nowadays are increasing the shelf life, making the process of storage cost effective without comprising the quality. Carica papaya (C. Papaya) is used in the agricultural industry and many traditional medicines worldwide. For evaluation of blood storage parameters, we stored blood with anticoagulant CPDA along with papaya leaf extracts, in different solvents such as hexane, acetone, ethanol and water, for 6 weeks under aseptic conditions. The effect of extracts on the blood storage parameters were assessed by cell viability, change in pH, RBC shape modification by SEM, and alterations in haemoglobin content using Alkaline Hematin method (AHD). To investigate the role of C. Papaya leaf extracts on blood quality we evaluate the chemical compositions of the hexane, acetone, ethanol and water papaya leaf extracts using GC-MS and the compounds found were matched with the WILEY and National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) library. Analysis showed different peaks in which some active compounds are also present. So, it is important to identify those compounds in the extracts which can be used to enhance the shelf life of blood. Keywords- Stored blood, RBC, AHD, shelf life and Carica papaya