Haploidentical Bone Marrow Transplant- A Boon For Incurable Blood Disorder Patients

Mankind and technology have come hand in hand to offer us the greatest boons of life. Medically it has been able to curb those diseases that made the mortality rate, of the entire world, high. Cancer, blood disorders and various other diseases have seen some deceased rates of visible height. Haploidentical Stem Cell Transplantation is one such development which has been of bonus points for us.

Haploidentical Stem Cell Transplantation is a blessing for patients suffering with various types of incurable blood disorders. This procedure does not need complete match of donor’s tissue. Haploidentical stem cell transplantation is a treatment option for the approximately 70% of patients who do not have an HLA-identical sibling donor. The availability of a haploidentical donor in most families is a potential advantage; both for avoiding the need to find an alternative unrelated donor, and for the potentially more potent graft-versus-tumor affect that can be induced.

This procedure rather than wiping out a patient’s immune system before transplanting donor bone marrow suppresses the immune system, which keeps patients from rejecting the donated marrow without harming their organs. As a result, the side effects are much milder. This procedure also greatly expands the potential donor pool, making more patients eligible for the transplant.

This transplant involves matching a patient's tissue type, specifically their human leukocyte antigen (HLA) tissue type, with that of a related. The closer the match between a patient's HLA markers and the donor’s, the better it is for the patient. The patient is screened for donor specific antibody prior to the transplant, to select the best possible haplo donor.

Bone marrow is the soft, spongy tissue found inside bones. It is the medium for development and storage of most of the body's blood cells. Bone marrow transplant (BMT) is a special therapy for patients with certain cancers or other diseases. A bone marrow transplant involves taking cells that are normally found in the bone marrow (stem cells), filtering those cells, and giving them back either to the donor (patient) or to another person. The goal of BMT is to transfuse healthy bone marrow cells into a person after their own unhealthy bone marrow has been treated to kill the abnormal cells.

Bone marrow transplant India has been used successfully to treat diseases such as leukemia, lymphomas, aplastic anemia, thalassemia, immune deficiency disorders, and some solid tumor cancers.

The goal of a bone marrow transplant in India is to cure many diseases and types of cancer. When the doses of chemotherapy or radiation needed to cure a cancer are so high that a person's bone marrow stem cells are permanently damaged or destroyed by the treatment, a bone marrow transplant may be needed. A bone marrow transplant in India can be used to:

•  Replace diseased, nonfunctioning bone marrow with healthy functioning bone marrow.

•  Regenerate a new immune system that will fight existing or residual leukemia or other cancers not killed by the chemotherapy or radiation used in the transplant.

•  Replace the bone marrow and restore its normal function after high doses of chemotherapy and/or radiation are given to treat a malignancy.

•  Replace bone marrow with genetically healthy functioning bone marrow to prevent further damage from a genetic disease process.

Bone marrow transplant is recommended in case of incurable or possible fatal blood disorders such as acute leukemia, aplastic anemia, multiple myeloma, and thalassaemia major, which cannot be cured by conventional methods such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

According to the doctors, though there are a few side effects like mouth ulcers, infections, bleeding in lungs and intestine in normal bone marrow transplant, still the success rate of haploidentical transplant is essentially the same as for people who receive complete match transplants.