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The American Red Cross said Monday it is experiencing an emergency blood shortage. According to the humanitarian organization, it is seeing the lowest number of people giving blood in 20 years. Hospitals are currently receiving blood products -- including whole blood, red blood cells, plasma and platelets -- faster than donations are coming in, the Red Cross said in a release. (Kekatos, 1/8)

The American Red Cross, which collects and distributes about 40% of the nation's blood donations, said the emergency shortage means some patients may get less blood than they need or hospitals may struggle to find suitable matches for patients with rarer blood types. "In more extreme situations," said Eric Gehrie, executive medical director for the American Red Cross, shortages may result in "cancellation of surgeries," including heart surgeries when hospitals and doctors don't believe they have enough blood to safely operate. (Alltucker, 1/8)

Germany's Bayer will continue its expansion into the U.S. despite its November announcement that its promising blood thinner candidate failed to demonstrate superiority over a competing medicine, the drugmaker's pharmaceuticals head Stefan Oelrich said on Monday. Bayer's experimental anticoagulant asundexian could still be a blockbuster if its second trial for stroke prevention reads out positively, Oelrich told Reuters at the JPMorgan health conference in San Francisco. (Wingrove, 1/8)

In a related commentary, Rishi Wadhera, MD, MPP, MPhil, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, warned not to interpret the drop in cardiovascular hospitalizations as a decline in the actual incidence of CVEs. "Clinicians, health systems, and public health leaders will need to prepare for the tsunami of cardiovascular risk factors and diseases that will likely emerge in the years that follow the pandemic," he wrote. (Van Beusekom, 1/8)

For decades, primary physicians and cardiologists have focused on two numbers: LDL or low-density lipoproteins, known as “bad cholesterol,” and HDL or high-density lipoproteins, a.k.a. “good cholesterol.” The two numbers are considered key determinants of a patient’s cardiovascular disease risk. But a growing number of physicians and researchers are saying that it’s time to move beyond this timeworn emphasis on “good” or “bad” cholesterol. Instead, there’s a potentially more accurate marker of heart attack risk: apolipoprotein B (“apoB” for short). (Gifford, 1/8)

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith on Monday underwent open heart surgery to repair a defect valve that caused his heart attack in late October, the Marine Corps announced. Smith had successful surgery at an unnamed hospital “to repair a bicuspid aortic valve in his heart, which was the cause of his cardiac arrest on Oct. 29,” according to a Marine Corps statement.   (Mitchell, 1/8)

Medical professionals in China’s Jiangsu province have uncovered the genetic sequence behind a rare case of type P blood group – even rarer than the subtypes such as “dinosaur blood” or “panda blood.” According to People’s Daily, the rhesus-negative blood type often referred to as “panda blood” in China, comprises approximately 0.4 per cent of the Chinese population. In comparison, the para-bombay phenotype, known as “dinosaur blood” accounts for about one in 10,000 to one in 100,000. (Muzaffar, 1/9)