Yashoda Advanced Bone Marrow Transplant Institute Creates History
This is the story of two brothers from a family, Sai Karthikeyan, a 6 year old boy and his elder brother Sharath Chandran, a 12 year old boy, both suffering from recurrent bleeding manifestations from low platelet counts requiring regular platelet transfusions from their early childhood. Both of them have also had recurrent infections requiring many courses of antibiotics and had been hospitalized for more serious infections several times. Both these brothers were subsequently diagnosed with severe Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome, a life-threatening primary immunodeficiency disorder and curable only during early childhood with timely Allogeneic Bone Marrow Transplants. Because of their advanced age (above 5) they were denied bone marrow transplants at most of the transplant centers in the country. Their hopes were revived when they heard about the possibility of BMT at Yashoda Hospitals.
Finding a suitable HLA matched donor across the worldwide BMT registry was a challenge. Fortunately, both of them have the same HLA genotype and we found a complete 10/10 HLA matched adult unrelated stem cell donor from an Indian Stem Cell Registry, DATRI, located at Chennai. The family belongs to middle class economic strata and couldn’t afford finances for two unrelated stem cells from the registry. In this regard, BMT team at Yashoda took the initiative and after extensive correspondence and requests, we were able to get approval from the Unrelated Stem Cell Registry to use the stem cells for both siblings. Stem cells were collected from the unrelated donor at Ahmedabad over two consecutive days and subsequently were used for Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplants for both the brothers successfully. Today both the brothers have been cured of their life-threatening genetic immunodeficiency disorder.
The usual mortality for unrelated donor BMT in Wiskott- Aldrich Syndrome is more than 50% above age of 5 years and is even higher than 70% for children transplants when they are more than 10 years old. This is the world’s first reported case of Single Donor Unrelated BMT being used for two patients. Also this is India’s first case where a 12 year old child has survived Unrelated Donor Allogeneic BMT.
About Author –
Dr. Ganesh Jaishetwar, Consultant Hematologist, Hemato-Oncologist & Bone Marrow Transplant Physician
MD, DM (Clinical Hematology), BMT, TMC, FACP, Fellow in Bone Marrow Transplantation (Canada)
Dr. Ganesh Jaishetwar has successfully completed more than 60 blood & bone marrow transplants at Yashoda Hospitals. His expertise and special interests include treatment for Blood cancers (Leukemia, Lymphoma & Multiple Myeloma, MDS, Myeloproliferative disorders), blood disorders (Anemia, Thallasemia, Aplastic anemia etc.), immunodeficiency disorders.
