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Each year, nearly 150,000 children and adults are diagnosed with leukemia (cancer of the blood cells and bone marrow) or lymphoma (cancer of the lymph nodes). A diagnosis like this is devastating for families. Often the best hope for a cure comes from a blood or bone marrow transplant. A transplant allows doctors to give higher doses of chemotherapy and radiation and then replace a patient’s diseased bone marrow with healthy bone marrow. This also establishes a new immune system to help prevent relapse.
Matching for transplants involves a tissue-typing system more complex than simple testing for blood type. There are nearly 3,000 different tissue-typing genes — more varied than any other genes in the body.
Each person inherits half of their tissue-typing genes from their mother and half from their father. With each full brother or sister, there is only a 25% chance of a match.
When there is no family match, the next step is to search the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) Registry for possible matches. This all-volunteer registry contains seven million registered donors, each with the potential to save lives.
Each day, there are more than 6,000 searches for matches. Even with millions of registered donors, many patients won’t find a match. The outlook is worse for minority patients.
Chances of finding a fully-matched donor in the registry is 51% for Caucasians, 30% for Hispanics, 20% for Asians, and only 17% for African-Americans. Tissue-typing genes tend to be most similar among people of the same ethnic background. Because there are fewer minority donors in the registry, it is harder to find matches for minority patients.
JOIN THE NATIONAL MARROW DONOR PROGRAM REGISTRY
More than 50,000 children and adults die each year from leukemia and lymphoma, often because donors cannot be found. But with each new donor, hope grows.
Joining the registry is simple. Visit www.marrow.org or call 1-800-627-7692 for more information. For a tax-deductible cost of $52, a registration kit will be sent to you. A simple swab of the inside of your cheek is all that is needed.
MORE INFORMATION
Please consider joining today. For more information: leukemia-lymphoma.org, www.marrow.org
Article provided by the Medical University of South Carolina.
