Stem cell transplantation is a medical procedure in which damaged or destroyed by infection, disease, or chemotherapy with a new and healthy one from his or her own self or a donor whose genetic composition is similar.
There are many bone marrow transplant hospitals in India which allows you to donate your bone marrow. Donating your bone marrow or stem cells can help treat life threatening diseases like leukemia, lymphoma, aplastic anaemia, genetic disease like the sickle cell anaemia, congenital neutropenia and thalassemia and also diseases of the immune system. Also a condition like a damaged bone marrow which is a result of chemotherapy is treated.
A brain injury which has been serious will not let you be a donor even after you have recovered. Blood cancer patients will never be able to donate stem cells. But if you have had a treatment without chemotherapy or radiation therapy and have no history of recurrence, you may choose to donate. Mental health is also checked during testing for a donor and people with conditions like schizophrenia are not allowed. Diabetes, cold or flu, properly controlled epilepsy, pain that doesn’t require a treatment or medication is not interfering with being a donor.
A patient with a history of stroke is never allowed to be a donor even after recovery. You must have a proper immunization schedule. While people with kidney stones can be allowed, the ones with a kidney removed are not allowed. In some cases a kidney donor may be allowed only if he or she has completely recovered from the earlier transplant. The ones with hepatitis or serious liver ailments are not allowed to register as donor, chronic Lyme disease is a tick borne disease which is chronic and such patients are also prevented from donating. Patients with hepatitis A will be allowed to donate. Medications and the conditions which lead to medications are crucially checked during the registration for stem cell transplant donor.
While organ recipients and recipients of live tissues from animals are not allowed to become bone marrow donors, the people who have received bone, skin or corneas are allowed to be a donor. The sexually transmitted disease such as chlamydia, herpes, Human papilloma virus, or syphilis does not prevent you from registering as a donor. You may not be allowed to register if your BMI suggests any abnormalities as it would pose as a risk to your health.
You also may choose to donate your newborn’s umbilical cord blood after he or she is born. The umbilical cord is the intimate connector between a mother and her child, which exchanges food, excretory products and respiratory gases like oxygen and carbon dioxide through blood. It also contains stem cells.
Bone marrow transplant is done by few procedures according to the recipient’s requirement. There is autologous and allogenic bone marrow transplant. In the autologous one you receive your own bone marrow cells which were extracted earlier; in the allogenic one a related donor is chosen. Bone marrow harvest and Leukapheresis are processes of bone marrow transplantation. Both methods are painless.