American scientists have created synthetic blood for transfusions

Synthetic blood will save the life of the victim while they are being taken to the hospital and are looking for a suitable donor.

Фото: Depositphotos

Despite many successes in the provision of emergency medical care over the past decade, people are still subject to bleeding.

This is especially problematic when people are seriously injured in remote areas or during hostilities. About 17 000 people die each year from hemorrhagic shock (loss of too much blood) in the US (that's about 46 people per day). Moreover, the US medical community may soon face a significant shortage of blood supplies. According to the analysis conducted in the 2011 year, by the 2030 year in the United States there may be a shortage of about 4 million units of donated blood.

Combined with the need for blood transfusions during surgery, the danger of transmitting infectious diseases through shared blood, and the ongoing shortage of blood donors, we may soon be faced with a serious medical crisis—a shortage of donor blood.

In search of a solution to this problem, doctors from the University of Washington Medical School in St. Louis presented the product Erythromer, which is a synthetic analogue of human blood. With it, a person will not die from hemorrhagic shock while he is being taken to hospital.

Erythromer - not a blood substitute, but an element for transferring oxygen from one part of the human body to another. With its help, a person will live until he is taken to the hospital and a suitable donor is found. The service life of such a substitute is up to 48 hours.

Erythromer is human hemoglobin, obtained in the form of a powder, which allows it to be stored for up to six months - much longer than the 42 days that is the shelf life of refrigerated blood. Moreover, there is very little risk that doctors could accidentally transmit diseases such as HIV, H1N1 or Zika through synthetic blood transfusions.

Doctors initially developed Erythromer for the military. Nevertheless, they now envision numerous applications in civilian medicine: from massive incidents with accidents to emergency assistance in rural areas and developing countries. Even NASA is showing interest in this technology, preparing to send astronauts to other planets, in particular to Mars.

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