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Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

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Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#21

Post by cheald »

superamit wrote: post #18
chimeracoder wrote: post #10

> 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. ;-)

I was gonna say, walking around with someone else's blood sounds like it'd make for an entertaining crime drama episode.

Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#22

Post by TamDenholm »

superamit wrote: post #20
TamDenholm wrote: post #15

This 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,…

Thanks a lot for the reply, i wish you well in your hard journey.

Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#25

Post by rdl »

Note that if you sign up with the donors.marrow.org registry in January, American Express is covering all the registry's costs (about $100 per new donor candidate), so it's a particularly good time to sign up.

Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#27

Post by fluidcruft »

chimeracoder wrote: post #10

> 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)…

Hmm. I don't think I've seen this as a twist/trope on TV procedurals yet.

Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#28

Post by locusm »

superamit wrote: post #18
chimeracoder wrote: post #10

> 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. ;-)

Im sure CSI Miami have it covered.

Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#29

Post by jacalata »

cheald wrote: post #21
superamit wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. ;-)

I was gonna say, walking around with someone else's blood sounds like it'd make for an entertaining crime drama episode.

(SPOILER) this is the twist in a novel I've read:http://tinyurl.com/6r6hkhn (edit: tinyURL'd so the link text doesn't give tell you what the book is if you don't want to know).

Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#30

Post by araneae »

rmk wrote: post #3

Thank God!

Oh no, I'm going to be that person.

Thank science! (And also those people who participated in a campaign to help him get a match.)

My mom was diagnosed with a rare variant of AML (APML or APL) in April 2011. When she was admitted to the hospital, she had at maximum one or two days left to live before she would have hemorrhaged to death without medical attention (no platelets).

When APML was first discovered in 1957, the average patient lived 2 weeks and the death rate was 100%. "God" didn't save a single person with APML prior to 1957.

Now the "cure" rate of APML is 95%. It's pretty astounding. My mom has now lived 10 months longer than she would have without modern medical science and hopefully will live a good deal longer because of it.

My mom is incredibly thankful, not to God (who she believes in), but to modern medicine. She even decided to not invite my Christian Scientist cousins to my wedding (which she was able to attend 4 months after her diagnosis) because she strongly feels that people who disregard medical science in favor of God are literally wishing her dead.

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