Want to donate your blood plasma? Here’s what to know.
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Plasma holds antibodies and clotting factors used to treat immunodeficiencies or traumas.
- Donors should hydrate, eat well and expect about a 90‑minute appointment.
- FDA recommends a donation frequency of about every 28 days.
As blood plasma donations boom across the U.S., North Carolina sits at the center of the growing plasma demand nationwide.
Just last year, Americans reportedly donated nearly 62.5 million liters of plasma, and plasma donation centers in North Carolina have more than doubled in the last decade, according to the Georgetown Blood and Plasma Research Group, with eight centers currently in the Triangle area and 42 centers throughout the state.
To learn what you should know before you donate, The News & Observer spoke with Dr. Robert Rainer, the medical director of Blood Connection, a nonprofit blood center serving a host of primarily southern states including North Carolina. Here’s what you can expect if you plan to give your plasma.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
So what is plasma, and why is there such a high demand for it?
Plasma is basically the liquid part of the blood. The cellular part of the blood consists of two parts: one is red cells, which carry oxygen, the other one is white cells, which fight off infection. The plasma has neither of those. What it has is a lot of proteins, and that’s essentially what people are after.
There are two types of plasma. There’s plasma itself, which actually has the coagulation factor, so the blood-clotting ability is intact. And then there’s a serum that we use in the laboratory where we do testing in tubes. We actually take those coagulation proteins out and we get the proteins that are left.
The biggest fraction that we see in plasma is something called albumin — and that’s something the [doctors] will want, because they’re able to put that into somebody who has lost a lot of blood volume. It’s the protein that matters, the protein that manages the water balance inside the body.
But the other real fraction of plasma is something called immunoglobulin — those are basically antibodies. We need those to fight infection. So for someone who’s immunocompromised, they don’t make enough immunoglobulin. We’re able to supplement them with somebody else’s immunoglobulin to provide some immunity.
And the third fraction that we want is the factor VIII. For hemophilia, they don’t have enough factor VIII in their blood, and we can get many, many donors and put that together and give them that clotting factor.
What medical conditions is plasma used to help treat?
It’s a lot of people who may get a trauma, a lot of people who are undergoing surgeries. That’s the most frequently used one. We also use it to treat cancer. When we’re taking out cancer cells and we’re treating somebody, we’ll put plasma or albumin back in. We also give it to [newborns] — they don’t have an advanced immune system yet, so we’re able to give them supplemental antibodies when they’re really, really young. Some people are born without antibodies so they benefit from that.
How should a donor prepare for their appointment?
Definitely be well hydrated, because we’re going to take fluid out of you. So if you don’t have enough fluid, and you go in and we take more fluid out, you could get lightheaded, dizzy, and even pass out. So it’s important to be well hydrated. And I tell our donors that if you’re peeing after you give blood, that’s good, because it means you got enough fluid back in you, and you equilibrate it out.
But just having general good health and good nutrition afterwards is important to rebuild the proteins that were taken out.
So it sounds like your body works pretty quickly to replace the nutrients that were taken out.
Yes, with both whole blood and plasma, you usually have a store that you can mobilize very quickly and get back into what we call an equilibrium, where you return to where you were before you gave the plasma. It’s usually just a couple hours after donating that people equilibrate pretty quickly.
How might a donor feel after they’ve given plasma? Are there any common symptoms?
When you’re giving plasma, we anticoagulate the blood and take the calcium out, and that bothers some people. They might feel some tingling in their fingers and toes — it feels pretty strange. But we’ll give them some TUMs and get the calcium back into them and help out afterwards.
As long as you have good fluid dynamics, you’ll do OK, but you might get lightheaded or feel a little run down.
How long can a donor expect to spend giving their plasma?
We usually say it takes about an hour and a half, maybe a little quicker or a little longer.
And how often can someone donate their plasma?
We recommend about every 28 days or so...When you donate plasma, if your total protein count goes below a certain level, then we know your body needs to rest. You get put on a schedule, and as long as you’re eating well and you have a pretty healthy diet, your body recovers fully in the timeframe.
(Note: the FDA says donating plasma twice within a 7-day period, as many plasma centers operate, is an acceptable practice, as long as it doesn’t exceed once within a 48-hour window.)
As a growing number of people are considering giving their plasma, why should they donate?
It helps treat patients, so that’s the biggest thing. This is pretty well established and it’s been used for quite a while, and it’s a fundamental resource for health care these days.
