Plasma is commonly given to trauma, burn and shock patients, as well as people with severe liver disease or multiple clotting factor deficiencies. It helps boost the patient’s blood volume, which can prevent, shock and helps with blood clotting. Plasma carries proteins, hormones and nutrients to different cells in your body. These include growth hormones that help your muscles and bones grow, as well as clotting factors that help you stop bleeding when you get a cut. Some of the nutrients it helps deliver are minerals like potassium and sodium.
What we need diseased/specialty plasma donors for is your plasma has the antibodies for your condition. These antibodies are used as reagents as positive controls for the very test kits that are being used to diagnose other patients such as yourself. Researchers and Laboratories have or can created the negative controls, however they need antibody rich plasma that has these antibodies to create the controls for the positive side. Once they have both the negative and positive controls that meet their internal validation the newest and best test kits can be manufactured and available to healthcare providers, hospitals and laboratories to make earlier diagnosis’ of their patients. Without donors donating plasma in these kinds of programs these very test kits run a high risk of going on back-order and not being available when healthcare providers need them to diagnose others with these conditions.
If you have been diagnosed with one or more of the below conditions you can help medical research and earn money while doing so. The plasm donation itself only takes about 30-40 minutes to complete and because you get your red blood cells back during the process you are able to safely donate 2x per 7 days, whereas if you were to donate whole blood you can only do that every 56 days (8 weeks). Plasma is the clear/yellowish part of the blood cells and it rebuilds in your system within a 24 hour period that’s why the FDA deems it safe enough to do it more frequently.
Currently we have a need for patients with the current conditions:-
- Mononucleosis
- Acute Hepatitis B, or those with Chronic Hepatitis B
- RA/Rheumatoid Arthritis
- LAA/Lupus Anti-Coagulant/APLS-Anti-Phospholipid Antibody Syndrome
- Crohn’s disease
- Celiac disease
- Thyroid (Hashimotos, Graves, Thyroiditis, Hypothyroid)