Blood plasma is a light amber-colored liquid component of blood in which blood cells are absent, but which contains proteins and other constituents of whole blood in suspension. It makes up about 55% of the body's total blood volume. It is the intravascular part of extracellular fluid. It is mostly water, and contains important dissolved proteins, glucose, clotting factors, electrolytes, hormones, carbon dioxide, and oxygen. It plays a vital role in an intravascular osmotic effect that keeps electrolyte concentration balanced and protects the body from infection and other blood-related disorders.
A unit of donated fresh plasma
Bags of frozen plasma, from a person with hypercholesterolemia (left) and typical plasma (right)
Private Roy W. Humphrey is being given blood plasma after he was wounded by shrapnel in Sicily in August 1943.
Dried plasma packages used by the British and US militaries during WWII.
Blood is a body fluid in the circulatory system of humans and other vertebrates that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells, and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells.
Venous (darker) and arterial (brighter) blood
Two tubes of EDTA-anticoagulated blood. Left tube: after standing, the RBCs have settled at the bottom of the tube. Right tube: Freshly drawn blood
A scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of a normal red blood cell (left), a platelet (middle), and a white blood cell (right)
Vertebrate red blood cell types, measurements in micrometers