The Rare Case Of Aplastic Anaemia And Stem Cell Transplant

Among the many rare health conditions, aplastic anaemia is one of them. It is a rare, yet serious blood disorder where your bone marrow does not make enough blood cells and platelets.

People who have these conditions have an increased risk of health problems, infections, bleeding issues, heart issues and many such other health complications, The only cure for now is a stem cell transplantation.

Case Of Success

Recently, in Mumbai, a 10-year-old boy Abdullah Harnekar also faced this life-threatening condition underwent the bone marrow transplant. This happened at the Narayana Health SRCC Children's Hospital in Mumbai.

Abdullah's elder brother was identified as a haploidentical (half-match) donor. He underwent a T-replete stem transplant. The transplant was headed by Dr Priti Mehta, senior haematoma Oncology and BMT consultant at Narayana Health SRCC Children's Hospital in Mumbai.

Symptoms And Causes

The symptoms usually develop within few weeks or months, so it is quite possible to not notice any changes in your body at all. However, some severe symptoms include:

• Frequent viral infections
• Fatigue
• Bleeding or bruising more easily
• Shortness of breath
• Pale skin colour
• Dizziness
• Headache
• Fever

What causes this condition? It usually happens when your immune system attacks your bone marrow making it unable to produce any stem cells. Inherited conditions, medical treatments or exposure to certain carcinogens may increase the risk of developing aplastic anemia.

Medical conditions like autoimmune diseases like lupus, viral infections like epstein-barr virus, cytomegalovirus, parvovirus, etc. can increase your risk of this health conditions.

Inherited conditions may be Fanconi anemia, dyskeratosis congentia, Shwachman-Diamond syndrome, Diamond-Blacjfan anemia and Pearson syndrome, and treatments like chemotherapy or autoimmune disease treatment can increase the risk.

How Is It Diagnosed?

There are blood tests and genetic tests that help diagnose this health condition

• Complete Blood Count CBC with differential measures of your blood cells and the five types of white blood cells
• Peripheral blood smear is where medical pathologists examine your blood cells and platelets under a microscope
• Reticulocyte count is where the number of immature red blood cells are counted
• Bone marrow aspiration and biopsy are procedures where bone marrow tissues are obtained for pathologists to examine under a microscope