– The risk of getting a brain bleed increases if you receive a blood transfusion from a blood donor who has developed several brain bleeds in the past, compared to blood from a blood donor who has not developed brain bleeds, says Jingcheng Zhao, researcher in clinical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institutet.
People who have had a brain haemorrhage are not allowed to donate blood. But of those who donate blood, there is a very small percentage who will have a brain bleed in the future. What the researchers now suspect is that there are special substances in the blood of such a donor that can be transferred to the recipient of the transfusion.
It’s probably about proteins.
– What could happen is that they are stored in the vessels in the brain, which then leads to becoming weaker and then leads to brain haemorrhage, says Jingcheng Zhao.
Cooperation with Denmark
The researchers underline that the risk of cerebral hemorrhage is, after all, very small. In the next study, they want to go further.
– What we are going to do now is to collaborate with researchers in Denmark blood samples from blood donors to see if we can find something that can explain this, says Jingcheng Zhao.
– What we are going to do now is to collaborate with researchers in Denmark on blood samples from blood donors to see if we can find something that can explain this, he continues.