The New Scientist magazine has reported that transmission-related acute lung injury, or TRALI is a leading cause of death from blood transfusions and results in hundreds of unnecessary deaths each year. It is an immune reaction that seems to be triggered by antibodies in some donor blood. In most patients the reaction is mild, but in some it can be lethal. The effects appear to show up primarily in people who have been exposed to a variety of blood groups in the past, such as women who have had more than three children or people who have had multiple transfusions.

Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY, are searching for more specific protein markers for Down syndrome. They began by using microarrays to compare trisomy 21 placental tissue to that of normal placentas. They have identified three previously unknown gene sequences that may be overexpressed in placentas of fetuses with Down syndrome.
Source: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, August, 2002