The use of transfusion therapy for sickle cell disease (SCD) is increasing due to expanded indications, increased availability of erythrocytapheresis, and oral chelators to treat transfusional iron overload. However, alloimmunization to red blood cell (RBC) blood group antigens remains a major complication for patients with SCD and often presents significant challenges in their medical manageme...

A 32 year old Indian female was referred to our hospital at 32 weeks of gestation because of difficulty in blood group determination and further antenatal care. The results of cell and serum grouping of her blood sample were suggestive of Bombay (O(h)) Rh (D) negative phenotype. An indirect antiglobulin test (IAT) using a pool of red cells from two Bombay Rh (D) positive blood donors gave negat...

Targeting chemotherapy selectively to cancers can reduce the toxic side effects. AN-152, a conjugate of doxorubicin and [D-Lys6]-luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LH-RH), is more potent against LH-RH receptor-bearing cancers and produces less peripheral toxicity than doxorubicin. Many cancers, e.g., 50% of breast cancers, but few normal tissues express these receptors, providing a selectiv...

Red blood cell deficiency of Rh proteins is associated with morphologic and functional abnormalities of erythrocytes and with a chronic hemolytic anemia of varying severity. Rh-deficiency may be the result of homozygosity either for a silent allele at the RH locus (Rhnull amorph type) or for a recessive inhibitor gene(s) at an autosomal locus unlinked to RH locus (Rhnull regulator and Rhmod). I...

Introduction Routine antenatal serological screening has been practised throughout the United Kingdom and worldwide for about 30 years.' Originally introduced to detect pregnancies at risk of haemolytic disease of the newborn (HDN) due to Rh anti-D antibodies, its continued use has led to an increasing realisation of the clinical importance of other red cell antibodies in the pathogenesis of HD...

T he Rh blood group system is one of the most polymorphic and antigenic blood group systems. It is second only to ABO in importance in blood transfusion and is well known as a primary cause of hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn (HDFN). The principal antigen is D, and the terms Rh positive and Rh negative refer to the presence or absence of D antigen. Caucasians of European extraction ha...

BACKGROUND During pregnancy, a Rhesus-negative (Rh-negative) woman may develop antibodies if her fetus is Rh-positive, which can cause fetal morbidity or mortality in following pregnancies, if untreated. OBJECTIVES To assess the effects of administering anti-D immunoglobulin (Ig) after spontaneous miscarriage in a Rh-negative woman, with no anti-D antibodies. SEARCH METHODS We searched the ...

Possible protective effects of the agonist [D-Trp6]LH-RH (analog of luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone in which Gly-6 is replaced by D-tryptophan) and antagonist N-Ac-[D-Phe(pCI)1,2,D-Trp3,D-Arg6,D-Ala10]LH-RH against testicular damage caused by x-radiation were investigated in rats. Three months after being subjected to x-irradiation of the testes with 415 or 622 rads, control rats showed m...

The RH blood group locus is composed of two sequence-related genes, RHD and RHCE, encoding the D, Cc, and Ee antigens in common Rh-positive phenotypes. In this report, we have analyzed the molecular basis of Rh antigens expression in weak D (Du) and RN donors, in whom there is a severe reduction of the D and C/e antigens, respectively. Genomic and transcript analysis of three unrelated low-grad...