BONE MARROW TRANSPLANT

Bone Marrow Transplant

Bone Marrow Transplant

Introduction

Bone marrow transplantation is a relatively new medical procedure that is used to treat diseases once considered incurable. Since its first successful use in 1968, bone marrow transplantation is used to treat patients suffering from leukemia (blood cancer), aplastic anemia, and lymphomas or Hodgkin's lymphoma, multiple myeloma, immune system and serious violations of certain malignant tumors, as for example, breast cancer or ovarian cancer (Fassas & Tricot, 2001). In 1991, the United States more than 7,500 patients have undergone bone marrow transplantation procedure. Although transplantation saves thousands of lives now annually, 70 percent need a transplant do not pass it because of the impossibility of finding a compatible donor.

History of Bone Marrow

The first animal experiments took place in early 1950. The first marrow transplants have been done in humans in 1957 by E. Donnall Thomas in New York, resulting in the deaths of six recipients in less than three months. They were made at a time when the notion of histocompatibility did not exist. The first successful long-term date from the 1970s and the first description of successful case of unrelated donor are made soon after. E. Donnall Thomas received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1990 for his advances in the field (Antman , 2001).

The very first successful bone marrow transplants were performed in 1959 by Jean Bernard at the Saint-Louis Hospital in Paris on 6 Yugoslav physicists accidentally irradiated in a nuclear reactor. Four survived to transplantation. A house was then the future oncologist Georges Mathé (Gianni & Bregni et al. 1997). In the 80 Eliane Gluckman is given by Jean Bernard the responsibility of the marrow to the Hospital of St. Louis. It is the source of the first transplant of umbilical cord blood of an American child suffering from Fanconi anemia (bone marrow suppression original autosomal recessive).

Bone Marrow and Diseases

The composition of the bone marrow can be altered by infections such as tuberculosis, causing a decrease in the production of blood cells and platelets. Besides the different varieties of cancer stem cells killers, may appear in the bone marrow, the disease is known as leukemia. To diagnose diseases involving the bone marrow requires an examination of the bone. This procedure involves using a needle that collects a sample of bone marrow red ilium. The procedure is performed under local anesthesia (Appelbaum, 2001). Exposure to radiation or chemotherapy destroys many of the rapidly dividing cells in the bone marrow, which will result in a diminished immune system. Many of the symptoms of radiation sickness are due to damage suffered by bone marrow cells. The osteoporosis (a disease that continually erodes the bones) can affect red bone marrow and can cause a decrease in the number of blood cells.

Red Bone Marrow

Red, or hematopoietic, bone marrow in humans is mainly inside the pelvic bones and, to a lesser extent, within the epiphysis of long bones, and even lesser extent, inside the bodies of vertebrae. It consists of a fibrous tissue stroma and ...