Abstract
IT has been known for more than 40 years that the oxygen dissociation curve of blood from newborn infants is displaced to the left of that for maternal blood1,2. Although erythrocytes of the foetus contain predominantly haemoglobin F, whereas the maternal red cells contain almost exclusively haemoglobin A, the different oxygen dissociation curves of maternal and foetal blood have not in general been attributed to the type of haemoglobin in the erythrocytes. This conclusion has been based principally on the following two observations: first, identical oxygen dissociation curves were obtained with haemoglobin solutions prepared from the blood of newborn infants and normal adults3; second, the whole blood of an adult patient whose red blood cells contained 69 per cent haemoglobin F was observed to have an oxygen affinity identical to that obtained with blood of normal adults4.
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MAURER, H., BEHRMAN, R. & HONIG, G. Dependence of the Oxygen Affinity of Blood on the Presence of Foetal or Adult Haemoglobin. Nature 227, 388–390 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1038/227388a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/227388a0
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