Abstract
We assessed the performance of a leukocyte reduction filter, WBF2, which has been developed for preparation of blood products with pre-storage leukocyte reduction, and analyzed residual leukocyte subsets in the filtered whole blood.
Whole blood was collected from six healthy volunteer donors and filtered 4 hours after collection. Leukocyte subsets of unfiltered and filtered whole blood were analyzed by flow cytometry, and absolute cell numbers of each leukocyte subset were determined.
Total leukocyte counts per bag were 1.75±0.34×109 for the unfiltered blood and 2.23±1.37×104 for the filtered blood. Average log10 leukocyte reduction rate was 4.83. In the filtered whole blood, the number of granulocytes, CD4+ T lymphocytes, CD8+ T lymphocytes and NK cells was 8.67±7.66×103, 11.6±36.5×103, 4.05±0.80×103 and 1.66±1.35×103, respectively. No monocytes or B lymphocytes were detected in the whole blood after filtration.
These results show that leukocyte reduction rate using the WBF2 filter varies according to leukocyte subset; in particular, monocytes and B lymphocytes are reduced more effectively by this filter.
