Word: marrows
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...recipient, the process begins with massive doses of chemotherapy or radiation, or both, to wipe out the disease. But that treatment kills the patient's bone-marrow cells as well. Without this spongy tissue at the core of many larger bones, a person cannot live. Marrow contains the precious stem cells that produce all the body's 30,000 trillion red blood cells, many of its infection-fighting white cells and the platelets that are essential for clotting...
...patient can begin the drastic treatment that will destroy bone marrow unless it is certain that the marrow can be replaced. Some have autologous transplants, in which their own marrow is harvested and returned to them later; others must search for allogeneic transplants from donors--usually relatives. But even close relatives do not always have compatible marrow. In recent years about two-thirds of all patients needing allogeneic transplants have sought unrelated donors...
...American Bone Marrow Donor Registry, based in Worcester, Mass., and the National Marrow Donor Program in Minneapolis, Minn., keep computer files on about 4.4 million people worldwide who have volunteered as donors. The odds of finding a matching donor average about 1 in 20,000--better for whites, tougher for others. An estimated 30,000 bone-marrow transplants are performed each year worldwide. But it is estimated that 60,000 others needing transplants die without ever finding a donor...
...typing, for a series of four genetically determined traits that, along with two more traits tested at a second level, must closely match those of the patient for a transplant to be accepted by the body. Neither Teri Majewski nor her husband matched, but they let the American Bone Marrow Donor Registry keep their records...
...swiftly. First, they essentially paralyzed the patient with drugs to reduce the demand for oxygen by his muscles, brain, lungs and other organs. Next, they gave him high-potency formulations of iron supplements and vitamins, plus "industrial doses" of a blood-building drug, synthetic erythropoietin, that stimulates the bone marrow to produce red blood cells. Finally, intravenous fluids were administered to goad what little circulation he had left...