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Boy suffers allergic reaction from blood transfer

A six-year-old boy has had an anaphylactic reaction during a blood transfer with his doctors finding that the blood donors had snacked on peanuts prior to donating, according to doctors in the Netherlands.

The boy, who had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia had to be resuscitated with adrenalin after he developed a rash, hypotension and angioedema, and had breathing difficulties during a blood transfusion.

The patient’s mother remembered her son had suffered a similar reaction after eating peanuts when he was only one year, leading the doctors to contact the blood donors. Three out of five recalled eating several handfuls of peanuts the evening before they donated blood.

It is possible that allergens transferred in blood products to other patients have led to reactions that have gone unexplained and unreported and the case highlights the need to consider donor-ingested allergens as a source of reactions in sensitized recipients

Read more at The new England Journal of Medicine

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