The blood cells that form your immune system, fight infections and help your body clot are created in bone marrow. Blood and bone marrow disorders may be noncancerous or cancerous (malignant). Some of these, such as leukemia and multiple myeloma, are dangerous because they can damage organs in the body. Others, such as sickle cell disease and aplastic anemia are not cancerous but still affect the blood and bone marrow.
Your marrow is a soft tissue in the center of the bones that holds white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets. Your body uses these cells to create new blood. Your marrow also makes proteins called plasma that carry antibodies to fight infections and other diseases. Cancerous plasma cells, which are called myeloma, develop in the bone marrow and crowd out healthy blood cells. This can cause low blood counts, such as anemia, bruising and bleeding. It can also reduce the number of normal antibodies and immune system cells, making you more likely to get infections.
Some people have inherited genetic mutations that disrupt their marrow’s ability to make blood cells. These are called inherited bone marrow failure syndromes. They can cause many symptoms, including fatigue and weakness caused by anemia, bleeding and bruising from low platelet levels and fevers, mucosal ulcerations and bacterial infections from neutropenia.
A blood stem cell transplant can replace damaged or diseased marrow with healthy functioning marrow. This can cure some cancers, such as leukemia and aplastic anemia. It can also treat other blood and marrow disorders, such as myeloma, sickle cell anemia and graft-versus-host disease (GVHD).
During a bone marrow transplant, a healthcare professional gives you a high dose of chemotherapy or radiation therapy to kill cancerous blood cells in your marrow and the rest of your body. This treatment is often combined with other blood and marrow treatments such as blood transfusions, immunotherapy or biologic therapies.
A healthcare professional takes bone marrow from your hip bones, breastbone, sternum, ribs and the centers of long bones in the arms and legs. A healthcare professional uses general anesthesia or local anesthesia to numb the area before taking the marrow. They use a hollow needle to extract the liquid marrow through a small incision in your skin or a small incision on the surface of the pelvic bone. They can also retrieve stem cells from the umbilical cord of newborn babies. They can then give you a blood stem cell transplant, either ablative or reduced intensity. With a reduced intensity transplant, you get high dose chemotherapy or radiation therapy to kill cancerous cells in the bone marrow before receiving the donor’s stem cells. This is less likely to lead to GVHD than a complete bone marrow transplant, which replaces the entire marrow and the immune system. Over time, your body’s immune system will accept the transplanted bone marrow and stop attacking it.
