Sickle Cell and unmatched donors

Recently we saw a story, a heartbreaker, really, about a boy with Sickle Cell Anemia, a serious disease in which the body makes misshapen red blood cells who had a bone marrow transplant. To have the transplant, the child had to go through chemotherapy to kill his immune system – a standard protocol for the transplant.

According to the article, the the source of the transplant was donated umbilical cord blood.  The sad result is that the transplant did not work.

The family uncovered some research that has yet to be analyzed fully and released for public consumption, and the study shows that unmatched stem cells do not help a sickle cell patient.

The poor parents only found this out by word of mouth (the article doesn’t cite the research so we can’t provide that to you) after the attempted transplant. Net, a lot of effort and hardship for no result.
Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2010/jan/30/after-failed-transplant-7-year-old-again-waiting/#ixzz0ebbLu9Ic



Leave a reply