This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Long-term, frequent blood donation may lower CVD odds in women
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Women who donated blood frequently over a long period had lower risk for CVD compared with women who infrequently donated blood, according to findings published in Heart.
The effect was not observed in men.
Karlijn Peffer, MSc, and colleagues investigated whether regular blood donation lowered risk for CVD.
“Blood donation has been linked to a reduced cardiovascular risk in three previous studies, all unable to rule out a type of bias known as the healthy donor effect,” Peffer, of the department of donor research medicine – donor studies at Sanquin Research in Amsterdam, and colleagues wrote. “[The healthy donor effect] is the result of repeatedly applying health criteria to blood donors, thereby selecting them on factors such as blood pressure that could simultaneously affect future cardiovascular risk.”
The researchers examined the data of Dutch whole-blood donors with an active donation career of at least 10 years (n = 159,934), which were categorized into sex-specific donation tertiles based on the number of donations during the qualification period.
The primary endpoint of CV morbidity was based on hospital discharge diagnoses and death certificates from Dutch Hospital Data and Statistics Netherlands and occurring after the qualification period, Peffer and colleagues wrote.
Age-adjusted and starting year-adjusted hazard ratio was estimated through Cox regression.
Female high-frequency blood donors had reduced CV morbidity (HR = 0.91; 95% CI, 0.85-0.98) compared with low-frequency blood donors, the researchers found.
There was no effect observed in men (HR = 1; 95% CI, 0.95-1.05), Peffer and colleagues wrote.
To rule out a residual healthy donor effect, additional sensitivity analyses using a 5-year qualification period were conducted, the researchers wrote. The results supported the absence of residual healthy donor effect.
“The potential protective effect of blood donation on developing future cardiovascular disease might be used as preventive lifestyle intervention in healthy individuals,” Peffer and colleagues wrote. – by Earl Holland Jr.
Disclosures: The study was funded by Sanquin Blood Supply. The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts