James Harrison died, one of the most active blood donors in the world. His plasma saved more than 2.4 million children. TASR reports on the basis of a BBC report published on Monday.
James Harrison was known in Australia as “a man with a gold hand”. He died on February 17 at sleep at the age of 88 in the retirement home in the Australian state New South Wales. His family provided information about his death on Monday.
Harrison’s blood contained rare antibodies, antigen D used to treat Rheus’s diseasein which the mother’s blood cells are not compatible with the baby’s blood and its immune system attacks them. Harrison started donating plasma when he was 18 and continued regularly every two weeks until he was 81 years old. Harrison decided to donate blood after he underwent a large amount of blood as a 14-year-old surgery. He decided to repay regular donation.
In 2005 he became the holder of the Guinness World Record for the amount of blood plasma donated. He kept the first place for 17 years, on September 16, 2022 he was surpassed by American Brett Cooper from Walker, Michigan, who donated nearly 1065 liters of blood plasma for 17 years.
Rheus’s disease, also known as hemolytic disease of newborns, is a disease caused by a specific combination of blood types of pregnant mother and her unborn baby: the mother has a Rh factor negative; The child has Rh factor positive; The mother was in the past exposed to blood with positive Rh factors and developed an immune response to blood with a positive Rh factor (sensitization).
At that time, antibodies in the blood of a pregnant woman evaluate the fetal cells as foreign, begin to attack and destroy them. There may be a number of medical complications, including anemia and jaundice, so doctors are given anti-D immunoglobulin to prevent this to prevent this.
Harrison’s own daughter and two of his granddaughters were also the recipient of the medicine. Every second child affected by Rheus’s disease died of the drug in the mid -1960s. It is not known why Harrison’s blood was such a rich source of antigen D; According to some sources, this could be related to the large blood transfusion he underwent when he was 14.
There are approximately 200 antigen dbs in Australia, who can help approximately 45,000 mothers and their children per year – but not everyone donate blood regularly or do not produce antigen -D antigen in sufficient quality and quantity. Doctors and scientists therefore hope that they will be able to create a synthetic version of antigen-D.
