Recipient Epidemiology and Donor Evaluation Study (REDS) Program
What is the goal of the REDS program?
The REDS program works to proactively address potential emerging threats to the Nation’s blood supply, evaluate how to enhance the effectiveness and safety of transfusions, and serve as a resource for ongoing work in transfusion research. This highly successful program assesses blood banking (blood collection, screening, and processing strategies) and transfusion medicine practices. Now in its third phase, the REDS-III research program aims primarily to improve the benefits of transfusion while reducing its risks. Over the past 20 years, REDS has proven to be the premier research program in blood collection and transfusion safety in the United States.
The second phase of the program, REDS-II, expanded the original program’s focus by including countries seriously affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Many of those countries face critical blood safety and supply challenges. Underscoring the importance of global blood safety, Brazil, China, and South Africa now have joined other countries that have sites participating in REDS-III.
The domestic component of REDS-III has undergone a major shift in emphasis since the start of the REDS and REDS-II programs. While REDS-III continues to address donor health and blood donation safety and availability issues, it now integrates adult transfusion recipient epidemiology and laboratory studies. In addition, NHLBI has committed to the development of comprehensive databases which link demographic, clinical, and laboratory data on blood donors and their recipients. These data allow investigators to rapidly address key research questions in blood banking and transfusion medicine and inform blood policy decisions.
Internationally, the goal of the REDS program has been to reduce and prevent the transmission of HIV and other infectious agents, such as Dengue and Zika viruses, through blood transfusions. The program also seeks to evaluate transfusion practices and associated clinical outcomes in specific situations, such as with peripartum hemorrhage in HIV patients in South Africa and sickle cell disease in patients in Brazil.
- The program protects the Nation’s blood supply by conducting research to improve blood component safety and availability.
- NHLBI launched the REDS program in 1989 and has had two follow-up studies, REDS-II and REDS-III.
- Internationally, REDS seeks to reduce and prevent the transmission of HIV and infectious agents, such as Dengue and Zika viruses, through blood transfusions.
How does the REDS program contribute to scientific discoveries?
So far the program has established scientific approaches to assessing the risks of contracting transfusion-transmitted infectious agents; established databases to evaluate specific transfused patient populations; and added shareable biorepository resources for the scientific community.
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How is the current REDS-III program conducted?
The U.S. part of the REDS-III program has four research hubs, and each hub has a blood center and transfusion services to support healthcare and community hospitals. The international part of the REDS-III program involves collaborations between investigators in the United States and scientists at blood centers in Brazil, China, and South Africa. The research activities of all REDS-III centers are supported by a data coordinating center (RTI International) and a central laboratory (Blood Systems Research Institute, San Francisco).
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Blood has been called the river of life, and for good reason. Blood transports life-sustaining oxygen and nutrients. Blood automatically forms a clot when we get cut. Blood helps our immune system fight off germs.
WHAT: In response to growing concerns over the mosquito-borne Zika virus, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health, has expanded a study in Brazil to see if Zika virus poses a threat to the blood supply. This blood safety study -- which originally focused on another emerging mosquito-borne vir...