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Bone Marrow Donation

13/06/2011

There are often some really odd subjects that are popular on twitter, but last week one of them was heart-wrenching.  Alice’s bucket list is a collection of things 15-year-old Alice, who is suffering from terminal cancer, would like to see or do before she dies. One of them was for as many people as possible to join the bone marrow register.

Most of us have heard of donating blood (but, little gripe here – how many of you actually do it? ) but if a quick poll in the BBC Breakfast green room is anything to go by, very few know anything about donating bone marrow.

For someone with leukaemia or lymphoma, where the bone marrow is taken over by cancerous cells, a bone marrow transplant may be their only hope of recovery.  Put very simply, the cancerous bone marrow cells are killed by chemotherapy drugs, and then replaced with new ones from a donor.

But as with all transplants, the cells from the donor have to ‘match’ those of the recipient, otherwise they will be rejected. The closer the match, the better the chance that the transplant will be successful. The more people there are willing to donate, the more likely it is that patients who need one will be able to have a transplant. Alice has not been able to have a transplant simply because there is no one on the register who matches her tissue type.  At the moment there are around 400,000 people on the register, but as there are millions of different tissue types, far more are needed.

One of the easiest ways to join the register is to fill in an online application on the website of the Anthony Nolan Trust

http://www.anthonynolan.org/register

Once you have filled in the form, you will be sent a kit for taking a sample of your saliva, which can be used to determine your tissue type.  Once you are on the register you will only be asked to donate if there is someone who matches your particular tissue type. That could be straight away, or years later, or for some, never at all.

You have to be over 18 to donate and under 40 (which sadly rules me out, though I can still give blood). A few medical conditions can mean you can’t donate, such as  diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and auto-immune thyroid disease. A full list of ‘exclusion’ conditions is on the Anthony Nolan trust website. But if you are generally fit and healthy, then you should be able to apply. The moment they finish their university exams, I’m going to try and make sure my two sons, and as many of their friends as possible, get on the register.  They are ideal candidates, as there is a particular need for young male donors.

In the past donating bone marrow had to be done via taking the sample directly from the marrow – and lets be honest, it can be quite painful. However, donation is mostly done now using blood from a vein. However, unlike blood donation, you are given an injection to increase the number of stem cells in your blood. This is done every day for 4 days, and can make you feel a bit rough, with nausea and a headache. On the fifth day you are connected to a machine that can separate the stem cells from your blood. They are then given anonymously to the recipient.

You could be the only person in the world who could save a particular patient. So don’t delay – get yourself on the register as soon as possible.

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