Building Diversity in Bone-Marrow Registries
By LAURA LANDRO
WSJ
Like thousands of patients battling blood cancers, Natasha Collins faces a needle-in-a-haystack search for a bone-marrow donor. But for the 26-year-old medical student with recurrent leukemia, the hunt is even more of a challenge because she is half African American and half Caucasian.
Transplants of bone marrow, which produces new blood cells, offer a potential cure for a growing number of cancers and other diseases, but only if the patient and donor are genetically compatible. Only 30% of patients have a sibling with the same genetic makeup who can provide marrow transplants. For other people, the best chance of a match is someone of their own race or ethnicity. That poses a special problem for minorities, and the growing number of people who identify themselves as multiracial, because for these groups there is a shortage of donor volunteers.
Some seven million people in the U.S. have signed up on a national registry to be potential bone-marrow donors. Even so, less than half the 10,000 patients who needed a transplant last year were able to find a genetic match that led to a transplant. While the odds of a white patient finding a match are 88%, the odds for most minorities can be as low as 60%. The odds of actually receiving a transplant are as low as 20% for some minorities because of other factors such as access to care in their communities.
(More here.)
WSJ
Like thousands of patients battling blood cancers, Natasha Collins faces a needle-in-a-haystack search for a bone-marrow donor. But for the 26-year-old medical student with recurrent leukemia, the hunt is even more of a challenge because she is half African American and half Caucasian.
Transplants of bone marrow, which produces new blood cells, offer a potential cure for a growing number of cancers and other diseases, but only if the patient and donor are genetically compatible. Only 30% of patients have a sibling with the same genetic makeup who can provide marrow transplants. For other people, the best chance of a match is someone of their own race or ethnicity. That poses a special problem for minorities, and the growing number of people who identify themselves as multiracial, because for these groups there is a shortage of donor volunteers.
Some seven million people in the U.S. have signed up on a national registry to be potential bone-marrow donors. Even so, less than half the 10,000 patients who needed a transplant last year were able to find a genetic match that led to a transplant. While the odds of a white patient finding a match are 88%, the odds for most minorities can be as low as 60%. The odds of actually receiving a transplant are as low as 20% for some minorities because of other factors such as access to care in their communities.
(More here.)
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