On Tuesday, March 27, Plymouth State University hosted a bone marrow registration day as part of an event to create awareness in PSU students and promote donations. Roughly half of the participants were PSU students, with total participants numbering around 180.
The registration day was put on by DKMS Americas, a bone marrow donation center started in Germany in 1991. Since 1991, DKMS has facilitated over 8,500 transplants.
The collection of bone marrow from donors helps to fight leukemia, a cancer of the blood that specifically of the white blood cells that affects mostly children and adolescents. For many patients, bone marrow transplants from donors are their only hope for recovery.
The registration day that took place at PSU was designed to gather information from prospective donors and to collect skin samples to test to see whether or not they could become donors.
Bone marrow is extracted one of two ways; peripheral blood stem cell collection or PBSC, and bone marrow collection. PBSC involves receiving daily injections of filgrastim to stimulate blood stem cell growth, then the donor’s blood is drawn, the blood stem cells are filtered out and the donor’s blood returned to their body.
Bone marrow collection involves collecting bone marrow from the iliac crest, a thin portion of bone on the hip, while the donor is under general or local anesthesia. Marrow or blood stem cells from younger donors are preferred to that of older donors; the age of donors ranges from ages 18 to 60.
Once collected, donors are placed in a national registry where they can be contacted when a suitable match with a patient is found.