Word: transplanted
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...grass and some day to live normally in the world. For this hope David, 12, and his family took the ultimate gamble: they traded the safety of a germ-free plastic bubble at Houston's Texas Children's Hospital for the slim chance that a bone-marrow transplant would allow the immunologically defenseless boy to live freely. Last week they lost their gamble, and his death was felt across the country...
...well for David, whose surname has been kept secret by the hospital in order to protect his privacy. Doctors have not yet determined whether the transplant was a success, and his recovery has been marred by recurrent bouts of fever, diarrhea and nausea. He was released from his bubble so that doctors could more easily treat and diagnose these symptoms...
...with SCID lack specialized white blood cells called Tcells, which help defend the body against viruses and other invaders. T-cells are ordinarily produced in an immature form in the bone marrow and come to maturity in the thymus (hence the T). The only cure for SCID is a transplant of healthy marrow, a bloodlike fluid found in large bones. But such transplants are difficult, since donated marrow must be carefully matched to the white-cell type of the recipient, far more complex than simply matching A, B or O blood types...
...David, a marrow transplant was initially out of the question: no one in his family matched his cell type. But in the past few years, researchers at Harvard and New York City's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center have developed ways of chemically treating bone marrow so that transplants can be made even when the grafted marrow is imperfectly matched. These new methods made it possible for David to receive a marrow graft from his 15-year-old sister, Katherine...
...major peril in transplanting mismatched bone marrow has always been a rejection problem called graft-vs.-host disease. Even with treated marrow, there is some risk. According to Dr. Richard O'Reilly of Sloan Kettering, the disease is "the exact opposite of what we talk about with kidney or heart patients. Instead of the patient rejecting the organ, the cells that go in as the transplant literally reject the patient." If unchecked, the disease eventually destroys the liver, intestine and other vital organs. Early symptoms are similar to David's: nausea, diarrhea, fever...