This Article  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Gregg M. Galloway, MD; John A. Koepke, MD
University of Iowa Iowa City

JAMA. 1976;235(19):2079-2080.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

We are writing concerning the response given to the question asked by Dr Seaton and answered by Dr Perkins (234:760, 1975). The question inquired about the effects on the health of plasmapheresis donors who give at weekly intervals for long periods of time, specifically the effects on serum protein concentration. In his reply, Dr Perkins cited an article (Blood 23:647, 1964) that concluded that serum protein concentration remained essentially normal during weekly plasmapheresis programs. The serum protein concentrations were determined by electrophoresis.

Our donor-center experience and a recently published article (Transfusion 15:467, 1975) indicate that the picture is somewhat more complex. Often, the total protein level may be normal when -globulin levels by electrophoresis are quite often low-normal or even below accepted normal adult standards. By doing quantitative immunoglobulin determinations on these donors with low-normal or subnormal levels of -globulins, we quite often find depressed levels of . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?