What are leukocytes and what is leukocyte reduction?
Leukocytes are white blood cells, one of the types of cells in human blood. Their function is to help fight off foreign substances such as bacteria, viruses and abnormal cells in an effort to avoid disease. When leukocytes are transfused to another person, however, they do not provide any benefit to the recipient. In fact, these leukocytes, when contained in blood, are not well tolerated and have been associated with adverse transfusion reactions, such as fever (the most common, occurring in about 1 percent of red blood cell transfusions and up to 30 percent of platelet transfusions) and chills, as well as other serious transfusion problems, such as transmission of cytomeglaovirus (CMV) and human T-cell lymphotropic virus (HTLV-I/II). In addition, leukocytes can cause the formation of antibodies that make future transfusions less likely to be effective and more likely to cause a reaction. Leukoreduction is the removal of contaminating white blood cells from blood products. White blood
