drop too far e g below 6 such that activation occurs preferably the carbohydrate to be incorporated is a non reducing sugar for example sucrose trehalose or raffinose typically the carbohydrate will be present in the composition at a concentration of from 5 mm 80 mm preferably 20 mm 60 mm and most preferably 40 mm 50 mm more generally the present method can be used to incorporate many different carbohydrates into platelets the preferred carbohydrate used in the present invention is trehalose u03b1 d glucopyranosyl u03b1 d glucopyranoside after the carbohydrate has been incorporated into the platelets the platelets may be resuspended in a drying buffer which typically contains a stabilising agent the stabilising agent can be any carbohydrate that effects stabilisation of the dried platelets preferably the stabilising agent is trehalose drying the platelets may be carried out according to the description in wo a 98 34478 platelet rich plasma prp or platelet concentrate pc having a platelet concentration of approximately 1 3 u00d7 10 9 ml was washed twice with a buffer 100 mm nacl 10 mm kcl 10 mm egta 10 mm imidazole ph 7 4 with centrifugation at 480 g the pellet was resuspended in the buffer which also contains 30 50 mm trehalose pre activation was induced by filtering the platelet concentrate using a leukocyte reduction filter at 37 u00b0 c after the filtering step the platelets were incubated at 37 u00b0 c for up to 5 hours optimal time was 2 3 hours during this time microvesicles formed during pre activation were loaded with trehalose platelet counts were then obtained the platelets were pelleted 45 seconds at 14000 rpm and the sugars were extracted using.