Wolfgang Miesbach: A Historic Experiment That Changed Our Understanding of ITP
Wolfgang Miesbach, Professor of Medicine at Frankfurt University Hospital, shared a post on LinkedIn:
”Did you know about the Harrington-Hollingsworth experiment?
First evidence that whole plasma from patients with ITP transfused into healthy volunteers marked fall in platelet counts.
The result was dramatic: platelet counts in the volunteers dropped sharply, sometimes within just a few hours.
This was one of the first clear proofs that an autoimmune disorder can be transferred by plasma โ and that ITP is driven by circulating antiplatelet factors.
An experiment like this would never be repeated today, but it fundamentally changed our understanding of autoimmune thrombocytopenia.
This remarkable piece of history was shown during John Semple inspiring talk on ‘Novel insights in the pathogenesis of ITP’ at the recent EHA-SWG Scientific Meeting on Bleeding and Platelet Disorders.”
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