More importantly, to most of us Amit is just as much a stranger as the millions of other people who are touched by leukemia and cancer in general. Make sure you are donating in one way or another.
Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor
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Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor
#12I decided to sign up to donate my stem cells because of Amit. I did not realize how little it cost me to save a life and after that I felt irresponsible if I didn't sign up.
I encourage everyone to consider becoming a stem cell donor and I thank Amit for teaching me about it. I am relieved he found a match. He certainly deserved it.
Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor
#13My father-in-law was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which is also a cancer of the blood, about 7 years ago. He has had two stem cell transplants since than, one six and a half years ago and one a year and a half ago. Both times he nearly died, but after getting through the scary stages he's out mowing his lawn and spending time with grandchildren that he otherwise would never have met. Science is truly amazing, and we're so grateful to the medical professionals who took care of him and helped give him many more years of life than he otherwise would have had.
Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor
#14Overall, 75% of AML transplant patients survive year one, 50% make it through year five. Our thoughts are with you, best wishes!
Yup, AML sucks. My mother was diagnosed with APML in April 2011, which is a variant of AML with a much better prognosis (more like 90% than 50%). I was so relieved when we found out it wasn't AML proper and she wouldn't need a transplant, but it did get me to finally sign up for bethematch.org. Not everyone is "lucky" enough to get APML.
Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor
#15This is really great and i wish him well, but to my understanding at the ending of the post, even if all of this is successful, Amit still has a really short life expectancy? Can he perpetually do this over and over again to combat the disease and prolong his life longer?
That must be incredibly difficult to deal with.
Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor
#16> At this point, my blood type changes to the blood type of my donor. And my blood will now have my donor’s DNA, not my own. That's actually really fascinating. This perpetuates for life? This would seem to imply that a person who's received a transplant will, thirty years later, be walking around with two separate sets of DNA, as the other cells in the body presumably would not change. Given that DNA is (indirectly)…
As a total non-biologist, doesn't the "10/10" refer to the parts of the cells that touch and communicate? That is, the interface? If so, I would guess that what DNA is inside doesn't matter for the purpose of compatibility. Walks like a duck . . .
Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor
#17> At this point, my blood type changes to the blood type of my donor. And my blood will now have my donor’s DNA, not my own. That's actually really fascinating. This perpetuates for life? This would seem to imply that a person who's received a transplant will, thirty years later, be walking around with two separate sets of DNA, as the other cells in the body presumably would not change. Given that DNA is (indirectly)…
An interesting corollary of this is the possibility of curing AIDS[1]. Of course, the procedure is way to dangerous nor are there enough AIDS resistant donors for this become a viable cure, yet it is fascinating that these few people are one of the few that recovered from an incurable disease.
[1] http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1858843,00.ht...
Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor
#18> At this point, my blood type changes to the blood type of my donor. And my blood will now have my donor’s DNA, not my own. That's actually really fascinating. This perpetuates for life? This would seem to imply that a person who's received a transplant will, thirty years later, be walking around with two separate sets of DNA, as the other cells in the body presumably would not change. Given that DNA is (indirectly)…
Yep, perpetuates for life. It's called Chimerism.
I'd be interested (obviously) in finding out what other implications this might have for me long term besides enabling me to life a life of crime. ;-)
Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor
#19> At this point, my blood type changes to the blood type of my donor. And my blood will now have my donor’s DNA, not my own. That's actually really fascinating. This perpetuates for life? This would seem to imply that a person who's received a transplant will, thirty years later, be walking around with two separate sets of DNA, as the other cells in the body presumably would not change. Given that DNA is (indirectly)…
I'm sure it does cause potential complications to an extent. However, I know of at least two comparable situations that occur without medical intervention:
1) Pregnant women -- During pregnancy, and to some extent afterward, the mother's blood contains cells from the fetus she is carrying. Some of these cells migrate to other places of the body. Scientists hypothesize that this is part of why pregnancy may lower cancer risk -- something about how the mother's immune system deals with these foreign cells. This is called fetal microchimerism. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fetal-cells...
2) Chimeric people. In rare cases, a human can be born that is made up of two separate DNA profiles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)
Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor
#20This is really great and i wish him well, but to my understanding at the ending of the post, even if all of this is successful, Amit still has a really short life expectancy? Can he perpetually do this over and over again to combat the disease and prolong his life longer? That must be incredibly difficult to deal with.
It depends. If the cancer relapses it can be resistant to chemotherapy I've been exposed to before, which makes the prognosis a lot worse. There are alternative chemotherapies though and they can repeat the transplant. But yeah, if they can eradicate all traces of the cells now, and if the donor T -cells succeed in fighting off any cancerous cells that remain, the odds are a lot better.
It is difficult to deal with, or was definitely so at the beginning. But I guess people are really adaptable -- I've a list of things I want to do and try when I get out, and right now I feel like even if I only had another year I wouldn't be too bummed.