When a mother during pregnancy has noncompatible rhesus factors with her baby and the baby suffers from severe Rhesus Disease and receives a full blood transfusion, does this change the babies DNA in anyway? The patient has been diagnosed with severe treatment resistant Bipolar. Learning disabilities in math only. This patient also has issues with keeping a job and other day to day functions.
Dear Stephanie,
I do not think so. First of all, I would not use full blood transfusion but erythrocyte concentrates, which only contain minor amounts of leucocytes nowadays. Second, even if a lot of leucocytes would have been transfused, I could not think of any way which lead to alternation of the baby´s DNA. Finally, such blood needs to be iradiated prior to transfusion in order to inactivate the leucocytes transfused so that those cannot start a Graft versus Host reaction (the baby´s immune System is not yet able to clear the "hostile" leucocyte of the blood donor). So, no, I do not think there is a direct link between HDN, Transfusion and bipolar disorder.
Dear Stephanie,
the use of whole blood in a setting where you would not get erythrocyte concentrate to curb the hemolytic anemia and its complication HDN in the newborn period is meant to buy time until the baby build its own and clears the maternal antibodies. this would not in any way change the DNA make up the newborn. but in few cases esp twins the newborn can exhibit different blood groups due to the shared and immunologically accepted genes in utero. /Chimera effect/
in general, fetal transfusions and also neonatal transfusions are done with WBC fee products.
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