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Comment by axus | Hacker News Reader

My mom developed an allergy to eggs after a blood transfusion. She long regretted never being able to eat another chocolate eclair.

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That’s nuts. Seems like researchers should look really closely at weird side effects of blood transfusions since these are effectively “natural experiments” that would be impossible or unethical to run normally.

They do. These incidences are rare, but documented, and researched.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-peanut-aller...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562830/

It looks like the allergy isn't permanent though.

Generally, I think if a patient needs blood transfusions there's a bigger and more immediate life-and-death problem right there. I think allergies would be preferable to death.

Is my understanding correct? I hope blood transfusion hasn't become a routine procedure these days.

I don't think GC was suggesting that we stop blood transfusions, but rather that we do better tracking to improve our understanding in a way that normally would be unethical (if not for the fact that, as you say, blood transfusions are a life-saving intervention).

Yes exactly.

You get a blood transfusion for any major surgery.

Makes me wonder if there is any possibility to give blood in the lead-up to your surgery, such that you're transfused with your own blood?

It's called an autotransfusion and it's a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotransfusion

You get it IF there is a need for it, not always.

I had an open heart surgery and didn't get a blood transfusion.

No.

Before the 1990's but not anymore. The contaminated blood scandal in the United Kingdom (https://www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk/) and a lot of papers showing benefits to avoiding blood loss in the first place have changed practices. We haven't eliminated the use of allogeneic blood transfusions but they're indicated a lot less than they used to be.

Well, the boffins figured out somehow that if you get a blood transfusion from an Opossum you become immune to all snake venom for a while.

(Seems wikipedia removed this factoid now... and other sources state "most" snake venom)

I assume they tested on animals, not humans.

Can you provide a source? That sounds unlikely

Here is something scholarly:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5315628/

I cannot find anything now talking about a blood transfusion (I probably read about it 10 years back). It more or less jives with the scholarly article in that "immunogenic effects are reported".

A slightly less dry read:

https://www.grunge.com/1105496/how-an-opossum-could-be-the-r...

No, eggs, not nuts.

I'll see myself out.

As someone who has been deliberately used at a young age by a doctor for a medical experiment, I can tell you this is how human experiments are done these days. Take someone with condition X which is life threatening, and suddenly you can do all your unethical stuff without having to be afraid of consequences. You just have to crank up the severity and you suddenly are free to do whatever you want.

Can you sue?

You are supposed to declare your issues before (or at least after) you give blood. Kinda messed up that whoever donated that blood didn't report it. Then again, I'm glad the blood was available...

We can't conclude that the donor had an egg allergy. The immune system is complicated as hell, it could be the case that he had some weird protein circulating on his blood that was recognized by her immune system, and by chance this protein was structurally close enough to some egg protein that now eggs trigger an immune response on her.

Worth noting that the most prevalent protein in blood is albumin, and the major protein in eggs is, yep, albumin.

Are you implying there is a connection? Even if it's just for nonsense, I'd love to read it. Because other prevalent commonalities, you could make the same argument about water, for example.

"The immune system is complicated as hell."

You got that right! My wife used to eat a banana every day. Then something in her flipped and she reacts as if she is allergic to bananas and the rest of the world - not exaggerating. She can eat a very small number of foods and has to avoid most people because of smells. It isn't allergies it is - you guessed it - her immune system.

If we could just flip it back to "normal"...

Same thing happened to me. I was eating bananas, beef, coffee, etc. then I got some sort of viral infection. My thyroid became inflamed for a couple months. No doctor was able to find anything wrong with me.

Little did I know, having postviral sequelae causes my immune system to start hating many things I used to eat. A food blood sensitive test showed that bananas, beef, coffee were what set my immune system off the most.

I was told it was gut permeability causing food particles to leak into the blood stream causing the immune response. So the fix has been to stop eating those, let the gut heal, and over time I've been able to eat those foods in moderation years later.

Did the smell of a banana, or just having one in the house set you off - or did you have to eat it to have a response?

Only eating bananas

Some 30% of people have allergies. It can already be challenging to source enough blood with the current eligible population.

I don't think I ever had to declare allergies when donating my blood (France).

They focus on infections and cancers I think.

Why would they ask for allergies if we don't yet know that they can be transmitted like this?

I thought it was well known that certain allergies (eggs/peanuts) can transfer via transfusions? At least for awhile. It looks like there’s some literature on it at least, but I didn’t dig into it or anything. I just thought this was “common” knowledge since that’s what I was told years ago by a nurse I was dating in college, a long time ago.

Maybe it's known but I don't know about it :-)

I would assume things like that maybe after a bone marrow transplant but having a blood transfusion seems pretty mild I wouldn't expect any affects from it.

Killjoy note that the allergy may well be unrelated to the transfusion, despite occurring after it.

Though it seems quite plausible something in the blood caused an immune reaction that then also gets set of by egg protein.

FWIW, ChatGPT 3.5 says:

"The development of a new food allergy, such as an allergy to eggs, as a direct result of a blood transfusion is extremely rare and not a well-documented phenomenon. Food allergies are typically triggered by exposure to specific allergenic proteins found in foods, and blood transfusions do not typically involve the introduction of food proteins."

ChatGPT 3.5 is known to make mistakes, hallucinate, and not care about the factuality of its responses.

Given this, a comment which does nothing but quote chatGPT 3.5 verbatim can do more harm than not commenting at all, especially on health matters, where such qualities can constitute outright recklessness.

If you want to share your own thoughts, though, I know I'd welcome them. At least humans have a greater than 0% chance of caring about the well-being of humans.

Dunno but it seems not unheard of see eg. Peanut and fish allergy due to platelet transfusion in a child https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562830/

Eggs or chicken eggs? Could always use duck eggs.

If your mom’s still around let her know about vegan egg alternatives!

Vegan egg tastes like butts

I am not a vegan, but I eat a lot of vegetables, most vegetables, if prepared correctly are delicious, there are a lot of traditional dishes in every cuisine in the world that take absolutely no animal products on their preparation and have a wonderful taste and aroma.

I see no reason to eat those franken-foods just because you're a vegan, a lot of them have strange additives to make them taste and look like animal stuff, it is simply not worth the risk to eat them IMHO.

Of course, this is a personal view point.

> I see no reason to eat those franken-foods just because you're a vegan, a lot of them have strange additives to make them taste and look like animal stuff, it is simply not worth the risk to eat them IMHO.

"Just Egg" is mung bean and canola oil. You can DIY it for cheaper, it's like buying pancake mix. There's always a few strange additives for these sorts of products (improve shelf life, anti-caking, emulsion, whatever), but that's not a vegan-specific thing.

Seed oils like canola aren't great for health. They're fairly new to the food stream (only widely available since about 1900), heavily processed, and chock full of compounds the plant was making to protect it's seeds, many of which cause inflammation and other negative health effects. Olive oil, coconut oil, and animal fats have all been in use longer, and seem to be better for us. Avocado oil also seems to be decent, though it can be challenging to find quality unadulterated oils of any kind.

Any proper evidence or is this just some internet meme? https://www.consumerreports.org/health/healthy-eating/do-see...

You're welcome to eat the non-food. I won't stop you.

Aquafaba is a completely natural vegan egg substitute used in baking.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquafaba

I’ve used it with amazing success as a non vegan in both chocolate chip cookies and pancakes

She honestly asks me to bring over vegan mayonnaise sometimes. She also has a good egg-free cake recipe.

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