Patients given transfusions of blood stored for 29 days or more (still good in U.S. standards), are two times more likely to have a contagious infection in the hospital than those who get newer blood, researchers said. Regulation of U.S. Food and Drug Agency to allow the blood is stored until 42 days before having to be discarded. But researchers at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, New Jersey, found that blood stored nearly two weeks of the deadline it still may be problematic.

The researchers are tracking 422 patients hospitalized in an intensive care and given blood transfusions from July 2003 until September 2006. If they received blood stored 29 days or more, their blood stream infections, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, heart valve infections, sepsis (a serious medical condition in which inflammation occurs throughout the body caused by infection) and other infections with a possible two-fold compared with patients who received blood stored 28 days at the latest. These infections were not caused by contaminated blood donated at the time, but due to deterioration over time, the researchers said.
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