Freeze-Dried Blood May Save Soldiers' Lives

SpaceAdmiral writes "An Israeli company is working on a method to freeze-dry blood. This would enable soldiers to carry a packet of their own blood on the battlefield. If a soldier is injured and needs blood, medics could mix the dried blood with water and give the soldier a transfusion of his or her own blood. From the article: 'The idea is to take a soldier's blood, freeze it in laboratory conditions, take out the ice crystals leaving only the blood components. It will look like freeze-dried coffee in a little bag.'"

Two technologies

[andrewman327]

Polyheme [northfieldlabs.com] is an artificial blood that is in the final stages of field testing in the USA. Taken together, these two technologies promise to significantly reduce deaths caused by trauma on the battlefields and highways.

Blood Libel

[Distinguished Hero]

An Israeli company is working on a method to freeze-dry blood.

Great, though I hope this doesn't encourage the Blood Libel [wikipedia.org] people; that sort of thing still quite popular in "certain" parts [wikipedia.org] of the world.

Freeze-dried plasma was used in WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just at a WW2 faire, and they were showing dried powdered plasma used for injured soldiers. This may be a step up but isn't a brand new concept.

Old idea and a difficult problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an idea that has been around for a long time, but as far as I know no one has gotten it to work. The problem is probably that biological membranes have a hydrophilic surface and a hydrophobic core. In water they are happy that way - the hydrophobic part hidden from the water - but once the water is removed - then they are completely unstable (air/vacuum is effectively hydrophobic). Rehydrating probably gives some incredible mess of membranes. One can add molecules like sugars to try to compensate for the loss of water, but the fact that this was not done 20 years ago tells me that must not be enough - and that there is not some trivial answer. I did not see anything in the article that made me think that these guys had some break through concept.

Re:Two technologies

[andrewman327]

"it's closer to rolling up with a class of EMT's-in-training"

That's called rotations, and the students at my school all have to do them at different times. Believe it or not you may have an EMT in training assisting the full timers in patient care next time you call an ambulance.

Re:Two technologies

[NemosomeN]

In the Wall Street Journal (The only paper I read. Is is great? Well, it's free for me. Free as in mandatory subscription.) they said it was linked to several heart attacks. Before the testing on accident victims. Something happened, unrelated, that ruled that trial invalid, if I remember correctly, so they didn't have to tell anyone that there was a risk of heart attack.