Anicet Mbida 06:52, November 10, 2022

Anicet Mbida delivers to us every morning what is best in terms of innovation.

This Thursday, he is interested in a medical advance that could remedy the shortage of blood bags in hospitals.

Synthetic blood was transfused to patients.

Medical innovation this morning.

We may be done with the shortage of blood bags in hospitals.

For the first time, synthetic blood has just been transfused to patients.

It could change everything.

You may remember, in June, the emergency call from the French Blood Establishment.

He explained that the reserves were at their lowest.

That it was the second time in less than six months.

We then launched a huge blood donation campaign.

We now know how to cultivate red blood cells.

You only need a few milliliters from a donor.

And by reproducing the cells in the laboratory, we manage to create tens and tens of liters.

This blood has just been injected into volunteers by a team of researchers from the University of Bristol in England.

And everything went wonderfully well.

Which is great.

You know that today we rely solely on donations for transfusions.

Tomorrow, we could have an additional source,

What does it mean ?

That there will no longer be a need for donations?

No Unfortunately.

For a simple reason: blood from donations is free.

While the one made in the laboratory is still very expensive.

We constantly need hundreds and hundreds of litres.

This is why we will have to continue to donate blood.

This technique will rather be reserved for the rarest blood groups.

In our country, for example, 250 have been identified.

Between 700,000 and one million French people would be affected.

Because for them, finding compatible blood is a real headache.

Is there a difference between this cultured blood and that of the donors?

Yes !

It is of much better quality.

You should know that red blood cells live on average 120 days.

So when you donate your blood, we get a whole mixture of old blood cells at the end of their life and younger ones.

Whereas with cultured blood we will only have totally fresh blood cells.

This will be of interest to those who suffer from blood diseases and who regularly have to do transfusions.

With blood that is always fresh, they will be able to space each operation further and therefore avoid repeated injections.