fare better after a blood transfusion when the donor is female, according to a new study. As such, those and have a low birth weight who received red blood cells from only female blood donors had a lower risk of morbidity and mortality than those who received red blood cells from male donors.

Researchers from Emory University found that when receive life-saving blood transfusions, they face negative outcomes three times less when the blood donated from the transfusion is from women versus coming from men, according to . Further still, the older the female donors were, the higher the "protective effect" was for when receiving the red blood cells.

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The study, which was published in the journal, found that previous studies were mixed when it came to serious side-effects associated with low birth weight premature babies receiving blood transfusions. However, when it came to some of those negative outcomes such as intestinal damage, lung damage, or eye disorders, the protective effect from the female red blood cells proved to be effective, staving off or minimally reducing these problems for premature babies.

Preterm babies are at risk of being anemic which is why blood transfusions are performed on many babies born prematurely, according to the . The problem with getting transfusions is that they trigger an immune response in the body. This is why so many complications can result after babies receive O negative or positive blood, the only type they can receive shortly after birth.

That immune response, according to , was lessened when premature babies received blood transfusions from females versus males in the study.

To determine that blood transfusions from one sex were more beneficial than the other, researchers followed 181 premature babies who were a low birth weight at birth for four years, per the . The babies were from three separate hospitals in Atlanta and were chosen because they received their transfusions of red blood cells from only men or only women.

What they found was that those babies who received the blood transfusion from women fared better overall than those who received blood cells from men only. And as a result of this, medical practices in the future may need to be changed.

Researchers state that further research needs to be conducted to determine that larger-scale studies come to the same conclusion that when babies receive blood transfusions from women, they have better outcomes. However, given that no one wants to put a premature baby's life in danger giving them a blood transfusion that is substandard, finding ways to ethically do this may prove to be difficult to do.

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