The Presence And Persistence Of Pregnancy-Associated Red Blood Cell Alloantibodies In Blood Donors

Background: Females have higher RBC alloantibody prevalence than males, presumably due to exposure to non-self RBC antigens through pregnancy as well as transfusion. Given the lack of routinely available and longitudinal data on lifelong pregnancy and transfusion histories, few studies have been able to distinguish pregnancy versus transfusion as contributing risk factors for RBC alloantibody induction or for the persistence of RBC alloantibody detectability. We hypothesized that pregnancy would be an important source of persistently detected RBC alloantibodies and investigated this in a longitudinal blood donor database.