Can people with epilepsy donate blood?

14/04/17

Under supervision of CEBaP, Alyssa Kellens (General Practitioner in training) conducted a masterthesis to answer this question.

Blood institutions worldwide frequently have a policy of temporary or permanent exclusion of people with epilepsy to donate blood. However, arguments for this prudent policy are not based on proven scientific evidence, but rather on a two-fold rationale: (1) giving blood could evoke a new epileptic seizure and (2) the medications in the blood of epilepsy patients could  harm blood recipients.

Firstly, blood services worldwide were surveyed to gain a better understanding of the policies that are currently applied. The results of this survey indicate a large discrepancy in policies applied worldwide. A lack of scientific evidence could be one of the underlying reasons. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to further research the potential risks for donors and recipients regarding blood donation by people with epilepsy. This can then serve as a base for evidence-based policy making and lead to safer and more effective blood transfusion programs.

Secondly, we conducted a systematic review to examine the evidence with regard to adverse effects of blood donation on epilepsy patients. By searching 5 biomedical databases, 7283 references were identified. After title, abstract and full text screening, only three observational studies were finally included: one cohort study and two case series. None of the three studies could demonstrate that a blood donation resulted in adverse events in epilepsy patients. However, the studies were of poor methodological quality and lacked a solid statistical analysis.

We concluded that limited low quality studies could not demonstrate that blood donors with epilepsy are at an increased risk of adverse events. Further research is necessary to determine whether and how long epilepsy patients have to be excluded from blood donation.

Based on the high quality of her masterthesis, Alyssa Kellens is nominated by ICHO (the Belgian Interuniversity Centre for the Education of General Practitioners) for the prize “Young General Practitioner”, powered by the Belgian Journal “Artsenkrant” [content in Dutch]. This Belgian journal for general practitioners interviewed Alyssa in this week’s edition.