Japan Nuclear Crisis – Storage of Blood Cells

Some Japanese experts have been suggesting that workers from the nuclear plant should store there own blood cells in case of radiation overdose.

Fukushima Daiichi complex has been severely damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Plant workers are struggling to control the radiation leakage and some experts have noted that the work there will take years to finish and the radiation levels are very high making it very dangerous to be exposed there.

If exposed to high doses of radiation then they could have severe blood cell damage in the bone marrow making it impossible to make new blood. The treatment is to find a blood stem cell donor but that is hard to find and could bring lots of complications.

So to decrease the odds of complications when in need of this procedure, they have been told to store there own blood stem cells. This would involve getting several injections for several days to get the stem cells from the marrow to enter the blood stream. Then they would extract the blood from one arm to process it to extract the stem cells, then placed back in the other arm. This process can take up several hours.

Once there stem cells, any worker that have been exposed to a large amount of radiation could get infusions of their own cells.

Of course this could be limited to workers, if they have been exposed to very little radiation, then they would recover easily by their selves if not and have been exposed to a very high amount of radiation then they could suffer major organ failure. They hope that this treatment will be useful so that they have very small injuries and deaths due to this incident.