Studies have found that red blood cells play a greater role in the immune system through their DNA binding ability

Anemia is very common and affects a quarter of the world's population

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are a class of proteins that play a key role in the immune system by activating immune responses such as cytokines

The results showed that when red blood cells bind to too many nucleic acids that cause inflammation, red blood cells lose their normal structure, making the body no longer recognize them

Manguemerty said: "Now, when patients in the intensive care unit develop anemia, almost all of our critically ill patients are like this.

Mangalmurti said this discovery of DNA binding may also have an impact on research that uses red blood cells for diagnosis

Mangalmurti and other researchers are studying whether this is an effective option for diagnosing infections in critically ill patients, and whether this red blood cell DNA binding mechanism is a common mechanism for anemia in parasite infections

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health (R01 HL126788, R01 AI 091595, UM1 AI126620) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health Affairs of the US Department of Defense through a peer-reviewed medical research project

Journal Reference :

1. LK Metthew Lam, Sophia Murphy, Dimitra Kokkinaki, Alessandro Venosa, Scott Sherrill-Mix, Carla Casu, Stefano Rivella, Aaron Weiner, Jeongho Park, Sunny Shin, Andrew E.