Bone marrow is a soft, spongy material found in your large bones. It makes more than billion new blood cells every day, including red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. The good news is that donating bone marrow can be as easy and painless as giving blood.
A bone marrow transplant replaces diseased bone marrow with healthy tissue, usually stem cells found in the blood. In an allogeneic transplantation ALLO transplant , blood stem cells from the bone marrow are transplanted from a donor into the patient. HLA-matched bone marrow is less likely to cause a possible side effect of transplantation called graft vs.
In , that equals about 14, people — from very young children up to older adults — in the United States who need to find a donor outside of their close family.
You register with the NMDP online or in person at a donor center. You collect cells from your cheek with a cotton swab or provide a small blood sample. This is done by following directions in a mail-in kit or at a donor center. On day 5, a trained health care provider will place a needle in each of your arms.
In the case of allogeneic transplants, identifying a potential donor who can give their stem cells to another person involves analyzing the human leukocyte antigens HLA , which are proteins found on the surface of the blood and in tissue cells. Just as important, matching at HLA will decrease the chance of the new marrow reacting against the patient, a reaction called graft versus host disease.
When a stem cell transplant is successful, the new stem cells work to produce healthy red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. The development of donor registries in Canada and other countries has been a major step forward in helping people find compatible donors. In fact, according to information from Canadian Blood Services more than 80 per cent of Canadians who have had transplants were helped by donors living outside Canada.
Room number : B People have a transplant either:. To be a donor you need to have stem cells that match the person you are donating to. To find this out, you have a blood test to look at HLA typing or tissue typing.
Staff in the laboratory look at the surface of your blood cells. They compare them to the surface of the blood cells of the person needing a transplant. Everyone has their own set of proteins on the surface of their blood cells. The laboratory staff look for proteins called HLA markers and histocompatibility antigens. They check for 10 HLA markers. The result of this test shows how good the HLA match is between you and the person who needs the cells.
A brother or sister is most likely to be a match. There is a 1 in 4 chance of your cells matching. This is called a matched related donor MRD transplant. Anyone else in the family is unlikely to match.
This can be very frustrating for relatives who are keen to help. This is called a haploidentical transplant. It's sometimes possible to get a match from someone outside of the family.
This is called a matched unrelated donor. To find a matched unrelated donor, it's usually necessary to search large numbers of people whose tissue type has been tested.
So doctors search national and international registers to try to find a match for your relative.
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