Major Difference Between Plasma and Serum – imaluop

Plasma and Serum: Two liquid materials plasma and serum both are the elements of blood. But if we try to understand we would find how plasma differs from serum. Plasma and serum both are useful to determine different kinds of situations in blood. Serum can be used to diagnose various diseases, like blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol.

Plasma gives the medium where all blood cells are present and performs their own specific role in blood circulation, immunity, and many other major functions. Apparently, serum and plasma seem to be the same in some aspects. For blood group tests we can collect serum or plasma, both are components of blood.

Centrifugation techniques can be used to separate in both cases, plasma and serum. We can find plasma if we keep blood to form a clot and if we add anticoagulating substances, we will get plasma. So we can separate plasma and serum from a given sample of blood. This proves that both serum and plasma are elements of blood. 

What are the major difference between plasma and serum ?

We know that we can separate both plasma and serum from liquid parts of blood, but they are not equal. After clot formation the liquid part residue is serum. On the other side after the addition of anticoagulant agents, the liquid portion remains known as plasma. An anticoagulant is added to slow down coagulation to find plasma.

We listed all the major differences between plasma and serum in the comparison table for better understanding.

Plasma	Serum
It is a straw yellow-colored fluid and it is a transparent liquid part of blood.	It is the extracellular fluid of blood and it is undiluted fluid.
In blood plasma blood cells remain in a suspended phase.	Clot present and blood cells are attached in serum.
Plasma gives the medium for the transportation of excretory material produced during cellular metabolic activity.	The serum is a great source of mineral ions or electrolytes.
Plasma can be preserved for up to ten years as it has a long shelf life. Its shelf life is longer than that of the shelf life of serum.	Its shelf life is shorter than that of the shelf life of plasma. It can not be preserved for a long time, only a few months we can preserve it.
It has slightly more density as compared to the density of serum.	Serums have slightly less density as compared to the density of the plasma.
Water content is more as compared to the water content of serum.	Serums have less water content as compared to the water content of plasma.
Fibrinogen is responsible for coagulation present in plasma.	Clotting factors fibrinogen absent in serum which is a major difference between plasma and serum.
It requires less time to separate plasma from blood as compared to the time required to separate the serum from blood.	It requires more time to separate serum from blood as compared to the time required to separate plasma from the blood.
It is easy to separate the plasma from blood as compared to serum.	It is not so easy to separate serum from blood as compared to plasma.
Plasma occupies more volume of blood as compared to serum.	Serum occupies less volume of blood as compared to plasma.
Anticoagulants are applied for separating the plasma from the blood.	To separate serum from blood samples anticoagulating substances are not required.
After the addition of anticoagulating substances, blood goes through centrifugation to separate plasma from the blood.	The centrifugal force is applied to the coagulated blood to separate serum from blood.
We can represent plasma as the addition of serum and clotting factors.	Serum can be represented as clotting factors removed from blood plasma.

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Reference: Major difference between plasma and serum