n New Jersey, March 31.Nalini Ambady, a 54-year-old professor of psychology, was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia in 2004. She was treated and remained healthy for around eight years, until the leukemia returned in November. Ms. Ambady’s students and colleagues from Tufts and Stanford universities took to social media platforms to find a donor for a stem cell transplant, which would potentially cure her. But the hunt for a donor for Ms. Ambady is extra complicated. Why, http://www.tomsoutletsalecheap.com - tomsoutletsalecheap.com ? She is South Asian. The odds of finding a fully matched donor depend on the ethnicity of a patient. For a transplant to succeed, donors and recipients should have a matching set of genes called Human Leukocyte Antigens. About one-third of patients can find an identical set of HLAs in their siblings, while two-thirds have to depend on unrelated donors. The search for potential donors to South Asians is difficult because of the diversity in the population’s HLA, says N.K. Mehra, head of Immunology and Immunogenetics at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. “The Indian Subcontinent has been a melting pot for various racial groups which halted here, intermingled with the local populace leading to the emergence of a novel set of HLA,” he said. As an antigen, the HLA also performs the basic biological function of boosting the body’s immunity and guarding the system from any kind of infection, http://www.cheaptomsshoessalei.com - toms shoes sale . “Hence, populations with a higher rate of infection or a high microbial load, like that of India, are expected to have even greater diversity in HLA,” Mr. Mehra added. The problem of varied HLA is exacerbated in India, where there is a very small pool of donors given the size of the population. “We need to have at least half a million donors representing various ethnic groups in India,” Mr. Mehra said. The number of registered donors in India is way below that figure. India has four registries but only two actively function. Datri, a Chennai-based stem cell registry which started in 2009, has about 36,000 registered donors, while Marrow Donors Registry India at the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai has 14, http://www.cheaptomsshoessalei.com - toms shoes ,000. This pool of 50,000 registered donors dissolves further as not all go through with a donation once called upon. “Even if a match is found, there is a fear of the donor being unavailable,” said Sunil Parekh, chairman of MDRI in Mumbai. High levels of illiteracy in India add to the problem. “In large parts of the country, nobody knows what a marrow or stem cell is or what a disease called leukemia is,” Mr. Parekh said. Jeffrey Chell, chief executive of the National Marrow Donor Program in the U.S., added that donors need to be retained: “Sometimes donors join the registry during the appeal of a patient in need; they join to help save that person’s life. Inevitably, they aren’t a match for that person but come up as a donor entirely different patient.” “Unfortunately, they say no even if we have educated them to the fact that they are more likely to match someone else in need from their anc
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