Posttransfusion viability of rabbit erythrocytes preserved in a medium containing inosine, adenine, and isoosmotic sucrose.

A sucrose medium containing relatively great amounts of adenine and inosine (AIS-CPD) was more effective for maintaining adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and 2,3-diphosphoglyceric acid (DPG) levels of human erythrocytes for more than 35 days at 4 degrees C than control ACD-packed cells, sucrose medium (S-CPD), and sucrose medium containing a small amount of adenine. Then rabbit erythrocytes were used prior to in vivo test of human cells. (1) After storage for 5 weeks the ATP level (mumol/g Hb) was 3.25 in AIS-CPD, 2.65 in AISNa-CPD (AIS-CPD containing NACl plus sucrose instead of sucrose), 0.77 in S-CPD, and 0.42 in CPD (fresh: 5.39; n = 4-10). (2) The DPG level (mumol/g Hb) was AIS-CPD not equal to fresh greater than AISNa-CPD greater than S-CPD not equal to CPD. (3) The mean corpuscular volume decreased gradually in AIS-CPD. (4) The fragility of red cells decreased in AIS-CPD. (5) The posttransfusion viability measured by the 51Cr method after storage of erythrocytes for 5 weeks was 84.5% in AIS-CPD, 70.6% in AISNa-CPD, 59.5% in S-CPD, and 28.5% in CPD, 24 h after transfusion 14.9 in AIS-CPD, 9.9 in AISNa-CPD, 12.8 in S-CPD, and 8.4 in CPD (fresh: 14.0; n = 7-8).