Sickle Cell Disease Treatment: Bone Marrow Transplant

Sickle cell disease is in fact curable with the use of bone marrow transplants, also known as stem cell transplants. While this method of treatment is a cure to sickle cell disease, it has significant risks involved, so it is rarely done.

Bone marrow is a tissue containing red bone marrow which has blood stem cells (unspecialized cells) which can develop and differentiate to become red blood cells, platelets, and white blood cells. By doing a bone marrow transplant, one is infusing healthy blood stem cells which will differentiate to form healthy red blood cells with the proper hemoglobin protein.

This cure has many risks involved that make it rarely used. Some of the more significant and common risks are graft failure and graft-versus-host disease. In bone marrow transplants, graft failure is when the body’s immune system rejects the new stem cells. Graft failure can be caused by various factors such as infection and inadequate number of donor stem cells. Graft failure occurs in slightly less than 5% of stem cell transplants and has potentially fatal effects including mortality. Graft-versus-host disease is when the donor stem cells or bone marrow attack the recipient as they view the recipient’s bodily environment as foreign. This disease can range from potentially mild effects to life-threatening effects. While there are many risks involved, bone marrow transplants are becoming more common and currently have an over 80% success rate.