Marrow test takes just a cheek swab

Nittara Lauland swabs the mouth of Amber Church during a March bone-marrow drive at the Lakewood Village Shopping Park in North Little Rock.
Nittara Lauland swabs the mouth of Amber Church during a March bone-marrow drive at the Lakewood Village Shopping Park in North Little Rock.

— Doctors said that if Leslie Harris doesn’t find a donor for a bone-marrow transplant, she will die - either from a recurrence of acute myeloid leukemia or from an infection or virus.

So during her first lengthy hospital stay, Leslie’s friends organized a bone-marrow drive in late October 2011 at the Rev Room in downtown Little Rock.

Those who got tested that night were surprised at how easy it was.

After filling out paperwork, they swabbed the insides of their cheeks with four cotton-topped sticks resembling Q-tips, which were then handed to representatives of a national testing center.

Over the next year, bone marrow drives for Leslie popped up all over the state, many of them organized by Colin Hall, an ex-boyfriend of Leslie’s.

Hall later said that he found his calling by going to Leslie’s aid. Before long, he was volunteering at a national testing center and excitedly reporting on Leslie’s Facebook page each time people who attended his drives turned out to be potential donors for patients across the nation.

Soon, others were organizing bone-marrow drives, too.

Thus far, there have been 14 drives for Leslie in Arkansas, one in Texas and one in New Jersey.

No matches have been found for her.

But as of early November, 41 people who attended those drives learned that they are potential donors for other patients across the nation who need transplants.

Two of the potential donors are sisters. They found out within hours of each other that their test results made them promising matches for a terminally ill man in St. Louis.

The siblings also learned that if one of them ever needs a transplant, they are perfect matches for each other.

Leslie’s sister, Lauren, had hoped to be a match for Leslie.

She even put off plans to get pregnant - just in case she could be Leslie’s donor.

But their genetic profiles just weren’t close enough.

That isn’t uncommon.

Among patients needing transplants, 70 percent won’t find donors within their families. Instead, they must wait for random white knights.

All test results are filed with the National Marrow Donor Program, which searches for potential matches among donors and people who need transplants.

If someone proves to be a match, he is notified immediately.

Bone-marrow donations aren’t as invasive or painful as they used to be. Most no longer involve surgery.

Instead, a process called peripheral blood stem-cell donation collects the needed cells from the donor’s bloodstream.

Once someone is determined to be a good donor, he begins receiving daily injections of a synthetic protein called filgrastim.

The injections start four days before bone marrow is collected.

On collection day, the donor’s blood is removed by a needle in one arm and passed through a machine that separates and collects the stem cells before returning the blood to the donor through his other arm.

It’s an outpatient procedure that takes four to six hours on one to two consecutive days.

The second donation method uses a syringe to collect marrow cells from the backside of the pelvic bone during an outpatient surgical procedure. Donors receive general anesthesia. The process takes one to two hours.

There are three ways to get tested as a bone-marrow donor:

Attend a bone-marrow drive, where a person can get swabbed for free.

Register with Be The Match, a testing center that mails out kits to those who want to test themselves at home. There is usually a fee.

Contact DKMS, the world’s largest bone-marrow testing center. DKMS mails out testing kits for free.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 12/17/2012

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