Blood Platelets Birth Regulator Discovered

It seems that research works of 2010 Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship winner Marloes Tijssen has made a brake through in the realm of treatment of heart diseases. Her focus in the work has particularly been on ‘megakaryocytes’. These are the cells in bone marrow that produces normal blood clotting platelets called ‘thrombocytes’. According to her “increasing our knowledge of how these cells work to form platelets will contribute to the improvement of human health, as platelets are known to be major players in heart and blood vessel disease that can cause heart attacks and strokes.” If the birth regulators for such platelets could be discovered, it would give a much desired boost to treatments of heart diseases. At present patients that are suffering from low platelet counts are receiving platelets that are usually harvested from healthy donors. But the problem is that every transfusion also carries along the danger of transmitting infectious diseases carried by contaminated blood. That is why finding safer platelets to replace these infected ones is extremely essential concludes Tijssen.