Blood clotting relies upon platelets and the reaction of those platelets to circumstances that indicate clotting is required: when suitably provoked platelets adhere to tissue, change shape, and bind to one another to form a clot. Platelets are essentially small slices of cell membrane and cytoplasm, shed by a specialized form of bone marrow cell called a megakaryocyte. Like all complex processes, clotting is impacted by age-related changes in cells and tissue. Platelets become more willing to clot, and can produce inappropriate clotting inside blood vessels, leading to thrombosis. We might ask how much of this problem is innate to platelets versus aris…
A Growing Population of Harmful Megakaryocyte Progenitors Contribute to Age-Related Thrombosis
Blood clotting relies upon platelets and the reaction of those platelets to circumstances that indicate clotting is required: when suitably provoked platelets adhere to tissue, change shape, and bind to one another to form a clot. Platelets are essentially small slices of cell membrane and cytoplasm, shed by a specialized form of bone marrow cell called a megakaryocyte. Like all complex processes, clotting is impacted by age-related changes in cells and tissue. Platelets become more willing to clot, and can produce inappropriate clotting inside blood vessels, leading to thrombosis. We might ask how much of this problem is innate to platelets versus aris…