COVID-19 is primarily a respiratory virus, with potential to infect the digestive system as well. People can get infected when they inhale or ingest the virus, but not via a blood transfusion. “There is absolutely no evidence of transfusion transmission for COVID-19, or any other coronavirus,” says Dr. Steven Drews, associate director of microbiology at Canadian Blood Services. “This family of respiratory viruses just doesn’t appear to be transfusion-transmitted.” This also applies to other coronaviruses such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)

On my wedding day, my grandmother was admitted to the hospital for pneumonia. Unfortunately, patients over the age of 50 years old (and especially those over 70 years old), such as my grandmother, have higher needs for support with blood products. Older patients are also more vulnerable to the side effects of transfusion. My husband and I went to get my grandmother’s blessings immediately after getting married. Here, we faced an interesting challenge. I witnessed a fellow physician attempting to get my grandmother’s permission for a blood transfusion. I found myself torn between being a

After the success of last year’s inaugural Canadian Blood Services’ Lay Science Writing Competition, we couldn’t wait to do it again! The Centre for Innovation was delighted to once again partner with science communication and research leaders Science Borealis and the Centre for Blood Research at the University of British Columbia to host this competition. This time around, we asked our research trainees to send us “Stories worth telling” in the areas of blood, plasma, stem cells or organs and tissues research. We challenged them to tell us about the people behind the research, the impact of

Recipients of the Canadian Blood Services Lifetime Achievement Award are individuals whose landmark contributions are recognized as both extraordinary and world class in the field of transfusion or transplantation medicine, stem cell or cord blood research in Canada and/or abroad. Who can be nominated? To be nominated for the Canadian Blood Services Lifetime Achievement Award, an individual must have contributed significantly to improving the safety and/or quality of blood, blood products, stem cells and/or cord blood or has made noteworthy improvements or advances in transfusion or

The 2019 Critical Care Canada Forum (CCCF) took place in Toronto Nov. 10-13. This year marked the fifth annual Deceased Organ Donation Symposium, a two-day symposium held during CCCF that promotes scientific research and discussion about organ donation and transplantation and its application to critical care practice. Presented by Canadian Blood Services, Trillium Gift of Life and the Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program, this year’s event did not disappoint. Presentations from this session were recorded and can be found on Canadian Blood Services’ professional education

The Centre for Innovation’s funding programs support research to help ensure a safe and effective supply of blood and blood products for Canadians. But, research and medicine are not static. To be effective, these programs must be dynamic and respond to new developments and changing needs. The Intramural Research Grant Program (IRGP) is one of the Centre for Innovation’s most responsive and impactful research funding programs. Every year, the Centre for Innovation welcomes applications to the IRGP competition to ensure that the program is always responding to emerging challenges facing the

Although it doesn’t happen often, sometimes patients will have a bad reaction during or after a blood transfusion. These incidents can range from a minor complication like a fever or allergic reaction, to a life-threatening situation, such as when a patient’s immune system destroys the red blood cells they received through transfusion. When an adverse transfusion reaction happens, it gets reported to the hospital’s transfusion service, also known as the blood bank, and may be reported to the manufacturer and to provincial and national surveillance systems as well. It’s one more reason why

Welcome to 2020! Take a look back with us by checking out the five most visited R.E.D. blog posts in 2019. 1. The ABCs of ABO blood types In the early days of transfusion medicine, doctors gave patients all sorts of different fluids, including blood or milk from animals. Success varied, and the results were often disastrous—even when they used human blood. It wasn’t until the start of the 20th century that physicians learned the ABCs of the ABO blood types and finally understood how to give a successful transfusion. 2. Ferritin findings: investigating iron and impacts on donors The health and

When doctors select red blood cell units for transfusion into a patient, they consider the patient’s blood type to determine what types of donor blood would be compatible. What they don’t consider is the sex of the patient and whether the donor is the same (sex-matched) or different sex (sex-mismatched). But this may be a factor worth considering, according to a study led by Dr. Michelle Zeller, Canadian Blood Services medical officer and assistant professor in the department of medicine at McMaster University. The study, “Sex-mismatched red blood cell transfusions and mortality: A systematic

Since its inauguration in 2007, I have had the pleasure of attending almost all Earl W. Davie Symposia. Both this event and the annual Norman Bethune Symposium are cornerstones of the academic calendar at the Centre for Blood Research, a multidisciplinary biomedical research institute in Vancouver, BC, which conducts innovative research in blood and blood-related processes. Dr. Davie, in whose honour this symposium is held, is truly a giant in the world of biochemistry and blood coagulation. His research to understand the proteins involved in blood coagulation led him to be one of the first