Donor Sex Does Not Affect Survival in Red-Cell Transfusion

THURSDAY, April 13, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Donor sex has no impact on recipient mortality in red-cell transfusion, according to a study published in the April 13 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Michaël Chassé, M.D., Ph.D., from the Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal, and colleagues randomly assigned patients undergoing red-cell transfusion to receive units of red cells from male or female donors in a 60:40 ratio (5,190 and 3,529 patients, respectively). Throughout the trial period, including during subsequent inpatient and outpatient encounters, patients maintained their trial-group assignment. The primary outcome was survival, which was assessed using the male donor group as the reference group.

In 79.9 percent of patients, the setting of first transfusion was as an inpatient. Before transfusion, the baseline hemoglobin level was 79.5 ± 19.7 g/L and patients received a mean of 5.4 ± 10.5 and 5.1 ± 8.9 units of red cells in the female and male donor groups, respectively. The researchers found that 1,141 patients in the female donor group and 1,712 patients in the male donor group died over the duration of the trial. The adjusted hazard ratio for death was 0.98 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.91 to 1.06) in the primary analysis of overall survival.

"We found no significant difference in survival between a transfusion strategy involving red-cell units from female donors and a strategy involving red-cell units from male donors," the authors write.

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