Relation between leucocyte depletion and storage.
We intended to answer two questions: (1) Does storage time of platelet concentrates (PCs) influence the efficacy of leucocyte depletion by filtration? (2) Does pre-storage leucocyte depletion by filtration of PCs improve the post-storage quality? To this end we tested in parallel the halves of 10 double-sized PCs, one half stored after filtration through a polyester filter (PL 50, Pall), the other half filtered after a 5-day storage period. Efficacy of leucocyte depletion showed to be independent of the age of PCs, and pre-storage leucocyte depletion of PCs was not able to improve the quality of PCs stored for 5 days, as long as the leucocyte contamination of unfiltered PCs was lower than 0.5 x 10(8)/unit.