dumb question but can donated blood "attack" or agglutinate the recipient's blood? e.g. blood type O is given to a person with blood type A. Since blood type O has antibodies against A and B antigens, could it agglutinate the red blood cells in blood type A with the A antigen?
if there was a previous exposure recently, possibly, if not no as no antibodies present in blood, but basically no under normal circumstances (if blood was given in suffiecient quantites to invoke immune response, this would cause damage to person)
Giving a mismatched ABO donation will cause a
very serious reaction. It doesn't have to be a "lot" but that depends on what you consider to be a large donation. Getting a blood transfusion of AB blood if you're type O will probably kill you. You do not need to have been exposed to the antigen recently because your serum has constantly circulating antibodies to the sugars (A or B) that you don't have. No need to go into why because it's irrelevant to VCE.
oh yeah that sounds right. Just clarifying, so the donated blood type O will have no antibodies as it has not been exposed to the Blood type A that has red blood cells with the A antigen. But if a lot of type O blood was given, a lot of antibodies against the blood type A would be produced, thus causing damage.
No, I think you've confused yourself here
How is transfusing blood without any antigens to a patient going to harm them?
The way it works is basically like this:
Type A = have A antigen (self) and B antibodies
Type B = have B antigen (self) and A antibodies
Type AB = have AB antigens (self) and no antibodies
Type O = have no antigens and AB antibodies
Thus you can put no antigens into anyone. But you can't put AB antigens into someone with A or B or AB antibodies.
Hence Type O is universal donor (can be given to any blood type) and Type AB is universal recipient (can receive any blood type).
ABO system is horribly annoying to get sorted in your head
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