Thrombapheresis causes a transient impairment of platelet responsiveness to epinephrine in healthy donors

In recent years, the platelet concentrates obtained from single donors by automated thrombapheresis has been widely used. During the whole apheresis procedure, the platelets are under shear stress, and alterations in the biocompatibility of surface may give a change in platelet function [1]. Some reports have shown that extracorporeal blood circulation increases platelet reactivity in healthy donors [2,3]. In contrast, several investigators demonstrated that in vitro recirculation of fresh human blood in an extracorporeal circuit diminished platelet function and decreased the number of glycoprotein antigenic sites on the platelet surface [4,5]. The influence of thrombapheresis on donors’ platelet function is still debated upon, and epidemiological studies on this impact in the broader population are limited. Hence, in this study, we made an attempt to investigate whether thrombapheresis leads to altered responsiveness to various agonists in platelet from healthy donors who showed normal aggregability before thrombapheresis.