Donor anti‐complement therapy: Complement‐ing the protection array?

Anticomplement therapy

The complement system is an important part of innate immunity; however, as with other parts of the immune system, the complement system can become pathologically activated and create or worsen disease. Anticomplement reagents have been studied for several years, but only recently have they emerged as a viable therapeutic tool. Here, we describe the role of the complement system in a wide array ...

The Ethics of Donation and Donor Protection

Refractory IgG Warm Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia Treated with Eculizumab: A Novel Application of Anticomplement Therapy

Warm autoimmune hemolytic anemia (wAIHA) is the most common form of AIHA, with corticosteroids in first-line treatment resulting in a 60-80% response rate. Atypical wAIHA and IgG plus complement mediated disease have a higher treatment failure rate and higher recurrence rate. We report a case of severe wAIHA secondary to Waldenström macroglobulinemia with life threatening intravascular hemolysi...

Complementing regeneration

Complement proteins and complement activation products with effector functions include complement opsonins (C1q, MBL, and C3d), anaphylatoxins (C3a and C5a), and the membrane attack complex (MAC). The complement system also comprises a variety of cellbound and soluble complement regulatory proteins that act on different activation pathways or at different steps in the cascade, and which prevent...

COMPLEMENTing the diagnosis of aHUS.

In this issue of Blood, Noris et al describe a functional complement assay that can be used to diagnose atypical hemolytic-uremic syndrome (aHUS). This assay might also be useful in identifying aHUS patients in remission and in detecting asymptomatic carriers of complement gene mutations. Besides being used for diagnostic purposes, this assay potentially can be used to monitor anticomplement th...