Characteristics of older age apheresis platelet donors and analysis of pre-donation blood routine parameters: A 6-year retrospective cohort study in Jinan

This study aims to analyze the characteristics of 56 to 60-year-old apheresis platelet (PLT) donors and analysis their pre-donation blood routine parameters. The information of PLT donors from 2019 to 2024 were analyzed, donors aged 56 to 60 years were taken as the older age group and those aged 18 to 55 years were used as the young group. The frequency of registered blood donations, registered male-to-female ratio, successful blood donation rate, percentage of donors achieving dual-unit PLT collection on single donation, blood retest pass rate, and pre-donation blood routine parameters were compared between the 2 groups. From 2019 to 2024, the person-time of registered PLT donors was increasing year by year, while the registered gender ratio was decreasing. There were 1319 persontimes of donations in the older age group, accounting for 3.81% of the total person-times. Higher frequency of registered PLT apheresis, successful PLT apheresis rate, and percentage of donors achieving dual-unit PLT collection on single donation were observed in the older age group (P > .05), while significantly higher pre-donation deferral rate was noticed in the young group (P < .05). In addition, compared to the young group, the white blood cell, hemoglobin, hematocrit, PLT count in males as well as the white blood cell and PLT in older age females were significantly reduced (P < .05). There was no significant difference in hemoglobin and hematocrit between older age and young females. Although some blood routine parameters fluctuated, they were still within normal range. Thus, we consider donations from donors aged 56 to 60 safe and suggest it a powerful short- to midterm strategy to overcome the challenges of the demographic change.