Bone marrow is a soft spongy flexible tissue present in the interior part of our bones. It is located in the medullary cavity. It is the heads of the large bones present in human body. The prime location is ribs, breastbone/flat bones, vertebrae, and bones of the pelvis. The bone marrow produces approx. five hundred billion blood cells per day. It helps manufacture the cells made and also keeps the immune system strong.
There are two types of bone marrow,
Redbone marrow, primarily found in the medullary cavity. it s function is to produce three types of blood cells red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. The work of each blood cells produced is different. Red blood cells transport oxygen throughout the body. White blood cells help fight with the infections. The platelets produced helps in preventing excessive flow of blood caused by an injury by clotting it. The three blood cells produced are part of hematopoietic stem cells which play a vital role in keeping the person alive and give the person strong immunity.
Yellow bone marrow, also called the fatty tissue as it appears yellow in color. The location of yellow bone marrow is primarily in the shaft bones. It is mostly surrounded by red bone marrow. The function of yellow bone marrow is to produce fat, bone, and cartilage constituting to be the component of Mesenchymal stem cell. It basically works to keep the bones functioning by providing nutriment to it.
The bone marrow present in the human body helps them to have a strong immune system. It helps them to fight with the disease and work of their own body organ. The depletion of their bone marrow can cause severe weakness, headaches, and fatigue. It results in the slow working of the human body. As human age, the yellow bone marrow is overshadowed by red bone marrow. The transplantation of bone marrow takes place when the person’s bone marrow is not healthy enough to function properly. It usually happens when a person is suffering from diseases like leukemia, cancer, pancytopenia, aplastic anemia, and other chronic du=iseases. The chemotherapy and radiation which makes the immunity very weak.
Cause of bone marrow
As stated above the bone marrow’s function is to repair the broken tissues, cure the damage caused by injury, and decreased the production of blood cells occurring because of the high radiation of chemotherapy. It also occurs because of genetic and environmental factors. It can happen immediately after birth. It can be inherited or acquired. The cause is the damage of hematopoietic stem cells which cannot produce red blood cells to run oxygen throughout the body. The inherited bone marrow failure examples are reticular dysgenesis, shwachman-diamond syndrome, and Fanconi’s anaemia. The acquired bone marrow failure is aplastic anaemia, Myelodysplasia, viruses(hepatitis B virus and VitaminB12, or folate deficiency causing maturation of defects of the cells.
Patient.info reports, inherited causes count to be 10-15% of cases of bone marrow failure, but for 30% of cases are present in children of any age. The acquired causes are more common in adults. The inherited causes have an increased rate of risk of future acute myeloid leukemia, solid tumors, and malignancy.
The symptoms of bone marrow failure are as seen in the inherited bone marrow,
Skin or skeletal abnormalities,
enlargement of the liver or lymphadenopathy
Dysfunction of multiple organs apart from the bone marrow
They also are at risk of developing solid tumor cancers.
The acquired cases of bone marrow failure has symptoms of,
Tiredness, weakness and breathlessness
Frequent and severe bacterial infections
Easy bruising, bleeding from nose or gums.
The symptoms may differ as to the age, body immunity, and interaction of other diseases. The treatment of bone marrow failure is done through Bone Marrow Transplantation. The bone marrow transplantation was successfully done by the University of Minnesota doctors in 1968. It has from then evolved. It is not a surgery but a process similar to blood donation. The people suffering from symptoms above mentioned are first asked to go/gone through conditioning therapy. The is depletion of deceased blood cells from the patient’s body and then infusing the healthy blood stem accumulated from the healthy fit tissue matched donor. It is also done so that the patient’s body doesn’t reject the tissue infused.
The treatment includes bone marrow transplantation is an effective method as the transfer of healthy bone marrow. It is done to restore the production and growth of bone marrow to produce healthy blood cells.
There are two ways of bone marrow transplantation,
Autologous transplantation, which is transfer of the healthy bone marrow from patient’s body to the deceased part. It doesn’t require any donor. It is self-done.
Allogeneic transplantation is another method where a donor is required either from a family or an unrelated person. The tissue has to match with the patient tissue. The bone marrow transplantation treatment takes at least two to three weeks time. The patient and donor go through a high medical check-up. The bone transplantation is the most sensitive case. Proper care and cleanliness have to taken in concern.
Blood pressure and other prior infectious disease are checked.
They are shifted into a high-efficiency particulate air room, for no bacterial infections.
The patient body is depleted and then the new healthy tissues are infused.
The growth of new blood cells takes time and it is usually three weeks. The patient is kept under observation to keep a check of no weakness but growth of the cells. The treatment of bone marrow transplant is a bit expensive. Akiko Shimamura MD, Ph.D., and other doctors have considered the treatment of bone marrow failure to the transplantation for both inherited and acquired. The bone marrow transplantation is now done in the easiest way and in India, almost more than twelve hospitals have specialized in the treatment of bone marrow failure.
There are several organizations that help in finding donors and funding as well. Medical News Today has reported around 50,000 hematopoietic transplantation,28,000 autologous transplants and 21,000 allogeneic transplantation performed every year. The bone marrow transplantation in india and abroad is sometimes funded by the government under several policies. The social organizations like DATRI, WMDA and Marrow Donor Registry in India and sites are some world association which has more than two lakhs donre registered. These organizations lessen the patient work of finding the donor and make it easy and fundable. The patient after the treatment is asked to pay regular visit to the OPD section. It is done to ensure the regular growth of healthy blood cells. They are advised to eat a lot of veggies, take proper healthy nutrition, and main a high efficiency because of bacterial infection. It has been noted that most of the patients return to their regular lifestyle and live long.