Publications by authors named "W Helmberg"

Background: Safe transfusion therapy requires accurate testing of blood donors and recipients to determine their ABO blood group compatibility. Genotyping does not always clarify serological blood typing discrepancies and conventional PCR methods are not suitable to identify ABO haplotypes. Therefore, an allele-specific long-range sequencing-based typing method was established.

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Introduction: Regular whole blood donors often suffer from iron deficiency (ID) or iron deficiency anemia due to the loss of 200-300 mg of iron with each donation. Hemoglobin (Hb) as donor eligibility criterion reflects iron stores only poorly. ID in blood donors is typically prevented or treated with orally administered ferrous salts, which frequently cause gastrointestinal side effects.

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Background: Perioperatively administered (leukocyte reduced) allogeneic red blood cell transfusions (lrRBCTs) may lead to transfusion-related immunomodulation and reduced overall survival (OS) in cancer patients. Herein, the effect of lrRBCT on local recurrence (LR), distant metastasis (DM), and OS in soft tissue sarcoma (STS) patients was analysed.

Methods: Retrospective study on 432 STS patients (mean age: 60.

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Background: Pathogen reduction (PR) of platelet concentrates (PCs) contributes to the safety of platelet (PLT) transfusion by reducing the risk of transfusion-transmitted infections and transfusion-associated graft-versus-host disease. In vitro quality of pathogen-reduced double-dose PC (PR-PC) made of eight whole blood (WB)-derived buffy coats (BCs) were evaluated.

Methods: Eight small-volume WB BCs from donors with at least 200 × 10 PLT/L were pooled with an additive solution to produce double-dose PCs (DD-PCs), which were treated with amotosalen/ultraviolet A light in a dual storage processing set, yielding 2 units of PR-PC.

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Background: Extracorporeal photopheresis is a therapy based on the induction of apoptosis to cells harvested from peripheral blood, followed by direct retransfusion. Currently, there are two approaches: inline procedures, where cell harvesting, 8-methoxypsoralen (8-MOP) incubation, and UV irradiation is performed with a single device, and offline procedures, with collection in one device, followed by 8-MOP incubation/UV irradiation using a second device.

Study Design And Methods: In a prospective crossover study, we compared an inline (Cellex, Therakos) with an established offline procedure (Optia, Terumo, and MacoGenic G2, Macopharma) in 6 patients, focusing on cell composition and apoptosis induction after 24 h.

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