Bone Marrow

To many of the nation's million people living with a diagnosis of HIV/AIDS, Timothy Brown is the Harry Potter of the disease: Like the young wizard who survived Lord Voldemort's wrath, he is the boy who lived. Today, almost 20 years after he became infected, Brown is, essentially, cured. Brown, now 45, is known in medical-journal circles as "The Berlin Patient," a moniker assigned him by a February 2009 case study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. In a "Brief Report," oncologist Gero Huetter and his colleagues at Berlin's University Hospital described the unique stem-cell transplant of an HIV-infected patient — Brown — who had acute myeloid leukemia, and the remarkable result: Twenty months after the procedure, the virus had not reappeared in Brown's body, even though he was no longer taking antiretroviral drugs.

Lenalidomide, sold under the tradename Revlimid, significantly improves progression-free survival in patients with myeloma, according to three clinical trials published Wednesday. All three trials were so successful that the results were unblinded early and, in two of the three trials, patients receiving the placebo were switched to the active drug. But researchers also found that the drug doubled the risk of a second, independent cancer occurring, and it is not yet clear whether the drug produces an increase in overall survival.

"My Sister's Keeper" New Line Cinema In theaters (released June 26) The premise Three-year-old Kate Fitzgerald is diagnosed with promyelocytic leukemia after her mother, Sara Fitzgerald (Cameron Diaz), spots bruises on her back. Despite chemotherapy, her leukemia continues to recur. She requires a bone marrow transplant, but her parents and her brother are not compatible (her doctor says the chance of a match is only 1 in 200).

Episcopal Bishop J. Jon Bruno, head of the six-county Los Angeles diocese, has been diagnosed with leukemia and is undergoing aggressive treatment to fight the disease. The 65-year-old bishop said in an open letter that he had been suffering from what he thought was a bout of pneumonia since March. He underwent further tests after treatment failed to cure the "nagging problem. " Doctors at Good Samaritan Hospital discovered that Bruno had acute monocytic leukemia, a form of blood cancer.

Federal law prohibits payment to people who donate organs, such as kidneys, other than to compensate them for travel and other related expenses. But it is perfectly legal to pay people for their plasma, sperm and ova. As for blood donors, they may be paid, but no major organization does so. In other words, a complicated set of rules and ethical considerations determines whether people are paid to give up a part of their bodies. The law places bone marrow in the same category as kidneys.

Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches will host a booth today at UCLA's John Wooden Center to aid in a search for a bone marrow donor for a 23-year-old Chinese man who has leukemia. The group coordinating the bone marrow drive also will be available to sign up anyone who wants to become a donor and be listed with the National Marrow Donor Program Registry.

The story this week on Wake Forest baseball coach Tom Walter who donated a kidney to one of his players is a reminder not only of the depth of some people's generosity but also of the need for more tissue donation to serve African Americans and other under-represented minority groups. Walter donated a kidney to Kevin Jordan, 19, after Jordan became ill from a disease called anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibody vasculitis. Jordan, an African American, was undergoing kidney dialysis while in search of a donor kidney.

A tall, blue-eyed blonde with an Ivy League education can command five figures when she sells her eggs to aspiring parents. People who donate sperm or give blood in the name of helping others also may do so for a fee. But donors of bone marrow, just as naturally replenishable and no longer very painful to extract, risk up to five years in prison if they accept compensation for providing life-saving cells to those stricken with cancer, leukemia or...

A federal appeals court Tuesday unanimously rejected a request from the Obama administration to reconsider a ruling that bone marrow donors can be compensated for providing the life-saving stem cells from their blood. None of the 25 active judges on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals took up the petition by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., asking for the full court to review a December ruling that the government fears could lead to money influencing donation decisions. The Dec. 1 ruling by a three-judge panel redefined bone marrow cells harvested from a donor's bloodstream as blood parts, not organ parts.

Injections of bone marrow cells into the heart can help heart attack patients regain pumping function, studies have shown. But such injections don't seem to work once more than a week or so has passed post-heart attack, researchers working with a National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute-sponsored trial reported Monday in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Assn.   Physicians at five participating medical research centers treated 57 patients with infusions of cells from the subjects' own bone marrow, two to three weeks after the patients had suffered a heart attack.

A federal appeals court Tuesday unanimously rejected a request from the Obama administration to reconsider a ruling that bone marrow donors can be compensated for providing the life-saving stem cells from their blood. None of the 25 active judges on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals took up the petition by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., asking for the full court to review a December ruling that the government fears could lead to money influencing donation decisions. The Dec. 1 ruling by a three-judge panel redefined bone marrow cells harvested from a donor's bloodstream as blood parts, not organ parts.

Like blood and plasma, stem cells are usually obtained through an easy procedure, and the people who donate them quickly generate more. But in other ways, they're markedly different. There might be only one or two potential donors who are a good match for a patient in need of stem cells. That means donors who are less than entirely altruistic are in a good position to demand thousands of dollars for their stem cells, which would make the life-saving transplant, sometimes used in the treatment of certain cancers and autoimmune diseases, available mainly to the rich.

The Obama administration has asked a federal appeals court to reconsider its ruling that most bone marrow donors can be compensated for providing life-saving marrow cells harvested from their bloodstreams. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously on Dec. 1 that bone marrow filtered from a donor's blood was a blood part, not an organ part, and could be legally sold. But in a petition for rehearing by a full 11-judge panel of the court, Atty.

News came today that singer Etta James is terminally ill with chronic leukemia; the Riverside Press-Enterprise also reports that the 73-year-old is suffering from kidney failure and dementia. Leukemia is a cancer of the blood and bone marrow, where blood cells are produced. When abnormal cells are created they disrupt the function of healthy cells. The disease can be acute or chronic; in acute leukemia, common in children, immature or early blood cells multiply quickly, and immediate treatment is usually necessary.

Jennifer McLagan has a knack for tackling topics that are, shall we say, "under-appreciated". To complete a "trilogy" of sorts, the author follows up her award-winning "Bones" and "Fat" with "Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal. " Full-on nose-to-tail eating, she leaves nothing uncovered, and no scrap unused. Wonderfully thorough, McLagan knows her subject inside and out, and she explores every last tidbit from almost every animal imaginable, from cockscombs to testicles.

A federal law banning compensation for organ transplants doesn't extend to bone marrow harvested from a donor's blood, a federal appeals court said Thursday in a ruling that could attract thousands of new donors in a national campaign to save the lives of those afflicted with cancer and genetic disorders. The 1984 National Organ Transplant Act included bone marrow in its list of "organs and parts thereof" for which donors could face criminal charges and five years in prison for providing them in exchange for money or other "valuable consideration.

The bone marrow donation process involves several steps. Individuals must be 18 to 61 with no history of hepatitis, heart disease, cancer, syphilis, AIDS or intravenous drug use, and they must submit to the preliminary blood test to record their antigens. Most potential donors never proceed beyond that point. But if identified as a possible match, the donor is asked to submit to a second blood test and a physical examination.

Injections of bone marrow cells into the heart can help heart attack patients regain pumping function, studies have shown. But such injections don't seem to work once more than a week or so has passed post-heart attack, researchers working with a National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute-sponsored trial reported Monday in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Assn.   Physicians at five participating medical research centers treated 57 patients with infusions of cells from the subjects' own bone marrow, two to three weeks after the patients had suffered a heart attack.

Women with early-stage breast cancer have plenty of procedures and treatments to deal with. So it may come as welcome news that a large clinical trial has found no reason for doctors to perform two tests that were thought to help predict patient survival. Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., the researchers say that the test results are meaningless. The tests in question involve looking for micrometastasis - microscopic evidence of a breast tumor's spread - in sentinel lymph nodes and in bone marrow.