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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is alerting hospitals, laboratories and providers of a Class 1 recall of Beckman Coulter DxH 800, DxH 600 and DxH 900 hematology analyzers—devices that run blood tests to help providers diagnose diseases and conditions such as anemia (low red blood cell or hemoglobin count), infections, blood clotting problems, blood cancers and immune system disorders. This is an update to an urgent medical device correction letter first issued by the company in 2018, after the company received complaints of inaccurate blood platelet counts. Hematology analyzers run diagnostic tests that count the number of different types...

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have discovered a new protein that controls the presence of the Vel blood group antigen on our red blood cells. The discovery makes it possible to use simple DNA testing to find blood donors for patients who lack the Vel antigen and need a blood transfusion. Because there has not previously been any simple way to find these rare donors, there is a global shortage of Vel-negative blood. The largest known accumulation of this type of blood donor is found in the Swedish county of Västerbotten, which exports Vel-negative blood all over the world....

Blood loss is a major cause of death from roadside bombs to freeway crashes. Traumatic injury, the leading cause of death for people age 4 to 44, often overwhelms the body's natural blood-clotting process. In an effort to enhance the natural process, a team led by Erin Lavik, a new Case Western Reserve University biomedical engineering professor, and her former doctoral student, James P. Bertram, built synthetic platelets that show promise in halting internal and external bleeding. Their work is published in Science Translational Medicine. The researchers were inspired by studies showing there are few options to treat soldiers suffering...

~~~snip~~~ But if the cells are still alive, why can't doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed. It was that "astounding" discovery, Becker says, that led him to his post as the director of Penn's Center for Resuscitation Science, a newly created research institute operating on one of medicine's newest frontiers: treating the dead. ~~~snip~~~