A single blood donation can save up to three lives. And donating blood three times per year could possibly save you, according to researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London.
Their study, recently published in a scientific journal of the American Society of Hematology, suggests that donating blood infrequently leads to genetic changes associated with leukemia, whereas donating regularly does not prompt such changes.
Leukemia is a type of cancer that affects blood-forming tissues like bone marrow. An estimated 67,000 Americans will develop leukemia in 2025 alone, and roughly 1 in 3 people diagnosed with the cancer die within five years.
For the study, researchers analyzed blood samples from two groups:
- 217 people who donated blood three times a year over 40 years
- 212 people who had donated blood fewer than 10 times in their lives
As we age, stem cells in our marrow naturally change, or mutate, and all donors in the study had mutations of a gene called DNMT3A. However, the mutations seen in the sporadic donors’ blood samples appeared in areas associated with pre-leukemia, whereas the mutations seen in the frequent donors did not.
The researchers also edited DNMT3A in human stem cells in a laboratory, inducing both types of mutations.
The stems cells with the type of mutation seen in frequent donors responded favorably to erythropoietin, a hormone that stimulates red blood cell production and increases after blood donation. Those cells did not respond to inflammatory chemicals designed to mimic an infection.
The stem cells with the type of mutation seen in sporadic donors, however, only multiplied in response to the inflammatory chemicals.
“This suggests that the DNMT3A mutations observed in the frequent donors are mainly responding to the physiological blood loss associated with blood donation,” according to the Francis Crick Institute’s summary of the study findings.
In other words, the researchers believe that frequent blood donation encourages genetic mutations that help the body respond to blood loss, rather than mutations associated with the development of leukemia.
One limitation to the study, researchers say, is that people who donate blood more often may just be healthier to begin with.
They also noted that the pool of study participants was small. So larger studies would be necessary to definitively prove that frequent blood donation decreases genetic mutations associated with leukemia.
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