Freshness dating is of the utmost importance to consumers. Obviously, products like milk, eggs, juice, fish and hamburger can become health risks if not used quickly enough. However, even items like snack-cakes, canned goods, and carbonated beverages are branded with “best if used by” dates these days. Now, researchers are attempting to find out whether or not the same logic applies to blood. In a recent article, AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard discusses several recent and/or ongoing experiments, being conducted by hospitals throughout the U.S., that are investigating whether or not patients who receive older blood during transfusions are at greater risk for complications. According to Neergaard, “Blood is rotated almost like milk on the grocery shelf: The Food and Drug Administration [FDA] allows red blood cells to be stored for 42 days, and hospitals almost always use the oldest in their refrigerators first to ensure none expires. How old the blood you receive is depends on how much the hospital has of your type that day.” “The average age of transfused blood is just over 16 days,” she says in the Tuesday report. “This summer, hospitals around the country are launching major new research to try to settle if fresher blood really is better for at least some patients. And if so, they’re hunting ways to turn back the clock for older blood… and offset any deterioration.” Click here to find out more! One such project is occurring at the University of Miami, where experts are attempting to remove cellular debris called microparticles that build up during storage. Other scientists are attempting to improve blood’s oxygen-carrying capacity. Neergaard also cites previous studies from the Cleveland Clinic and Connecticut researchers that found that patients who received blood which was more than 14 days old were somewhat more likely to die following the transfusion, needed to spend more time on a ventilator, and had higher infection and kidney failure rate than those receiving fresher blood during transfusions. However, as the AP Medical Writer points out, “that’s far from proof. Maybe the sickest patients just got the oldest blood, a flaw these kinds of look-backs can’t overcome. Complicating the controversy, other similarly performed studies concluded age of blood doesn’t matter, finding no differences between patients who got older or fresher transfusions.” Thus, new research will attempt to answer the question. In one study, backed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), 15 hospitals will analyze the operations of 1,800 heart surgery patients, each of which will randomly be assigned blood that is over 20 days or under 11 days old. A similar study is taking place in Canada, Neergaard reports, as well as at the Cleveland Clinic and eight additional locations. According to the NIH website, nearly five million Americans undergo blood transfusions each year. In related news, doctors are attempting to try and limit complications related to older blood by using a new procedure called autologous blood transfusion–the capturing and re-use of a patient’s own blood during an operation or other medical procedure. According to a recent study published in the Archives of Surgery, use of this procedure can cut the amount of blood that needs to be stored in half, Roni Caryn Rabin noted in a July 26 New York Times article. “This is safe and cost-effective, and we should be using it more often,” said the study’s lead author Dr. Carlos V.R. Brown of the University Medical Center Brackenridge in Austin, Texas.