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Interesting news!

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hopefulmommy:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Kolkata-/Baby-to-cure-thalassaemic-mom/articleshow/4152867.cms

best wishes

Zaini:
WOW !!!

Sharmin:
This is great - best of luck to Pinky and her new baby!

Sharmin

maha:
Can this really work? Since the patient is a full grown woman will the stem cells from the cord blood be enough? What will they do if they require more cells for proper engraftment? If this is possible its great news butttt
wish Pinky all the very best
maha

Andy Battaglia:
I think this is actually a very important story for a couple of reasons. The first may be even more important than this particular case.

First, there is a terrible stigma regarding thalassemia in India, and in fact doctors advise thal minors to not reveal their status, as it often will be a factor in marriage decisions...many people will not allow their child to marry thal carriers. This is a terrible policy in a country with 40 million carriers but it is the reality and I was requested to help develop ideas to counter this with a public awareness program in India. If anyone has ideas how we can battle this type of thinking, please pass them along. A highly publicized case like this can show the public that in today's world, a thalassemic can lead a good normal life, including having children. This can help moderate the thinking of many people and more articles showing that thals can live normal lives are desperately needed in many countries where thalassemia carries this stigma. The overall positive nature of this article is in a way, more important than the individual case.

Secondly, this is also very interesting. There have been some mother to child BMT's that have been successful. There is no reason that it can't work in the opposite way. One thing I learned at the NYC symposium, is that using cord blood for BMT's is proving to be very successful and that this sometimes leads to a mixed chimera where the patient has both their original bone marrow but also the bone marrow of the donor. A 20-25% engraftment of the new bone marrow is sufficient to make the recipient transfusion dependent with an Hb over 10. This has also led to less severe host vs graft disease in the recipients. If anyone questions if it's important to save cord blood, I will say, yes it is very important.

There are two ways of looking at the media. Of course they want to sell their product, but we need to look at it as something that can be exploited to help spread awareness about thalassemia and the advances in treatments that have turned this once fatal disorder into a manageable chronic condition. I learned awhile ago that we should take advantage of media exposure to further our goals and help to spread our message. I look at this from the point of view of "marketing" thalassemia and to my way of thinking, we should do everything we can to create more awareness about thalassemia, as this will lead to better acceptance and even more funding. We can and should exploit the media to create more awareness anytime we see the possibility. I agreed to two television interviews in the Maldives because I knew it would create more awareness and it did. I could even be called a shameless self-promoter at times, because promoting myself, promotes my mission. We need to learn to use the media and take every advantage we are given.

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