14 DAY TRIAL // Most of the blood banks now up and running worldwide work on the assumption that donated blood can be safely kept in storage for a period of up to 6 weeks.
However, a new study claims that, after just 21 days, this blood can prove detrimental to a patient's well-being.
Researchers explain that this is because older blood more often than not lacks the proper amounts of nitric oxide, a chemical compound that helps relax blood vessels and which plays a major part in the process of delivering oxygen by means of hemoglobin, EurekAlert says.
Because of this, several scientists maintain that transfusing blood that happens to be older than three weeks is fairly similar to feeding a patient a fatty meal.
Furthermore, some even suspect that the effects that such blood can have on an individual's body are fairly similar to those of smoking and diabetes.