A Dose of Haematology News #2 - Side Effect of Donating Your Stem Cells
Monday, April 13, 2009 at 11:00AM Even in UMMC, we do an average up to 5 mobilisation process per month. The majority are still for patient's own use (autologous mobilisation), done at the end of admiistration of chemotherapy.
In cases where the stem cells are needed for a different person, likely the sibling, the subject are given 4 days twice-daily injection of a hormone, G-CSF to promote growth of stem cell in the bone marrow. Consequently the cells will spill over into the peripheral blood and using the process of aphoresis or capturing of cells in the blood akin to dialysis.
In the recent Blood article, the American National Marrow Donor Program published their surveillance data of 2408 stem cell donors who undergo the mobilisation process. The donors are mainly for their unrelated marrow transplant program (the donors and recipient are unrelated). The side effects of exposure to G-CSF, the mobilisation process and other effect were studied.
The results showed that female subjects are more likely to develop problem with bone pain and venous access (more needing the use of invasive central catheter). Obese donor also reported more bone pain symptoms. There were also 15 patients who developed discomfort and chest pains needing hospitalisation for observation, but nothing major was established.
Full recover is the rule. The majority will have bone pain, with 1 in 4 complaining of headache and nausea during mobilisation.