Benzene Leukemia Law Blog : Benzene and Leukemia Lawyer & Attorney : Burke & Eisner Law Firm : Benzene Exposure, Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma

Aplastic Anemia is a rare and debilitating hematological (blood) disorder that can be caused by exposure to benzene, a known carcinogen. Though life threatening, if detected early, the disease can be managed and even cured. The following article from aplasticamemiasite.com is a useful resource for those seeking a comprehensive overview of aplastic anemia treatment options.

Aplastic Anemia being a rare disease has led to many deaths mostly due to lack of early diagnosis. However, if the symptoms of the disease are discovered early enough, it is possible to either control or cure the disease completely. Just like any other disease, the severity of the condition determines the type of treatment to be undertaken. Cases of Aplastic Anemia could be severe, mild or moderate. Severe Aplastic Anemia requires that the patient be hospitalized for specialized treatment because it is life-threatening. In the initial stages of treatment, the patient may have to undergo blood transfusion as he or she awaits treatment. Different methods of treating Aplastic Anemia are available although the most commonly known standard methods are blood transfusion, bone marrow transplant and immunosuppressive therapy. These treatments can either be used with an aim of managing the disease for a considerable time or to completely cure the disease.

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An 18-year-old boy living in Napa Valley, California, had extra reason to be thankful this Thanksgiving. After a three month stay at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Grant Beltrami recently received news that he is finally responding to the treatment he’s being given for aplastic anemia.

Stem cells have been donated to Beltrami as part of the advanced bone marrow treatment that is being given to him for this blood condition. Doctors reportedly found a bone marrow match for Beltrami from an anonymous woman living in Germany. And for the first time in more that a decade, Grant will begin to produce healthy blood. Although doctors say that he’s not cured, the signs are promising for his recovery.

“This is all pretty significant for us,” says Wendy Beltrami, Grant’s mother. “We’re feeling a lot of thanks for what is finally coming to an end.”

Boy Hopes to Return Home

According to reports, if Grant continues to make progress and his aplastic anemia begins regressing, he could be transferred out of the hospital by Christmas. They also claim that he may even get to move into the Ronald McDonald House with his parents while he continues to receive treatment. Doctors will continue to closely monitor Beltrami to ensure that his immune system doesn’t reject the new marrow at any point.

Unfortunately due to his aplastic anemia, which is a blood disorder that could prove to be fatal, Grant is missing his senior year at Napa High School. However, the Beltrami’s, did get to share a turkey feast for Thanksgiving that was put on by Ronald McDonald supporters.




 

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A boy living in Victorville, California, recently had to change his focus from attending Victor Valley High School and playing football and basketball to receiving treatments for his newly developed aplastic anemia.

Ryan Acevedo Jr., was reportedly diagnosed with aplastic anemia on July 25, just weeks before he was to start school at Victor Valley as a freshman. Aplastic anemia is a condition that causes bone marrow to stop producing enough new blood cells in order to ward off infection and carry enough oxygen from the lungs into other parts of the body.

Aplastic Anemia Details

Although the condition is rare, Ryan is one of less than 1,000 people diagnosed with aplastic anemia in the U.S. yearly, it still can be a life altering one since the exact causes of the illness aren’t always known.

“He has days where he talks about not wanting to live,” explains his mother, Pearl Osuna, 31. But she tells him, “That’s not going to happen.”

Ryan is currently being treated at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County for blood and platelet transfusions. Since his diagnosis, he’s been hospitalized five times due to complications or for other procedures, including one session of chemotherapy, which is a common treatment for aplastic anemia.

Doctors say that they don’t believe Ryan always has a realistic grasp of what he is facing and simply states: “It sucks.” Though he does always have a positive attitude and remains mentally strong. Staying strong is something doctors say is important in these circumstances considering Ryan has already gained 30 pounds from taking steroids for the condition. And when he tries to play sports he can only last a few minutes before he has to return home due to the lack of oxygen being carried through his body by his red blood cells. He has also been home schooled since discovering his condition.

However, Ryan and his family will not give up and are now in the process of feverishly looking for the right donor match for Ryan to receive a bone marrow transplant.

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The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute reports that between 500 and 1,000 people develop aplastic anemia each year. Although researchers are consistently studying and analyzing the causes behind the condition, an effective treatment has yet to be found for all cases of aplastic anemia. However, recent news claims that Kyle Miller, a seventh-grader in Seattle could receive a blood transfusion that's the treatment doctors can often depend on.

Miller discovered that he had aplastic anemia while attending Yakima's Discovery Lab School, where doctors informed him he could have one of three diseases: leukemia, idiopathic thrombocytic purpura (ITP) or aplastic anemia.

How Does a Child Suddenly Get Aplastic Anemia?

Though there are treatments available for aplastic anemia, some of them are only effective upon the degree of the condition at the time of its diagnosis. And, doctors can't be sure that treatments are going to bring the patient back to complete health. There is no known cause for aplastic anemia or why Kyle Miller suddenly developed the health condition.

Aplastic anemia occurs when the bone marrow isn't able to produce a sufficient amount of blood cells in order to replenish healthy blood cells. Although Kyle's choices for treatment are limited at this point, there is one that doctors find to be the most dependable, a blood transfusion. The tricky part about getting a blood transfusion as treatment for aplastic anemia is that it is only effective if the donor has the exact same bone marrow and blood type as the patient. And in this case, Kyle seems to be a lucky boy because his fifteen-year-old brother Gavin is a perfect match.

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According to recent reports, the Aplastic Anemia & MDS International Foundation has awarded Vidaza a positive opinion for human use. The award was reportedly given to the European Committee for Medical Products for Human use (CHMP). The news is very pleasing and hopeful to patients who aren’t eligible to receive stem cell transplants to treat their illnesses.

The CHMP’s positive opinion for the use of Vidaza for human treatment is reportedly based upon data gathered from the AZA-001 trial, which demonstrated a higher survival rate for those with severe cases of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and aplastic anemia. The Aplastic Anemia & MDS International Foundation is supposedly going to forward their approval to the European Commission. In doing so, the recommendation of Vidaza by the CHMP will be enabled to receive final marketing approval.

Reasoning Behind the Approval

“We are excited by Vidaza’s positive CHMP opinion because there are few treatment options for patients in Europe with this disease,” explains John Huber, Executive Director of the Aplastic Anemia & MDS International Foundation, “Vidaza not only extends patients’ lives, but also improves their quality of life. We are hopeful that Vidaza will receive marketing approval shortly and quickly be available for patients across Europe.”

Aplastic anemia is a rare condition where the bone marrow doesn’t produce sufficient new cells in order to replenish the blood cells. The aplastic Anemia & MDS International Foundation is committed to serving as a dependable resource for patient assistance and support. The organization provides patients and families with the latest medical information and funds to research and find cures for aplastic anemia and other related illnesses.

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Garrett has an 8-year-old twin brother, Tanner.  Garrett also has Aplastic Anemia.  Aplastic Anemia is a rare, serious blood disorder in which the normal  production of blood cells - red, white and platelets - slows or stops.

Garrett is lucky to have an identical twin.  Few who are diagnosed with Aplastic Anemia have a healthy identical  twin  that they can turn to for a bone marrow transplant which can develop a new immune system.

Dr. Emad Salman, the youngster’s hematologist/oncologist at The Children’s Hospital at HealthPark in LeeCounty, has cared for thousands of children with blood disorders and cancer.

He said this is a first in his 11 years at the hospital.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a child who needs a bone marrow transplant who has a twin brother who will be the donor,” he said.

In preparation for the transplant Tanner was given iron pills to boost his red blood cell count and Garrett started chemotherapy to wipe out his immune system and be ready to start a new one.

Researchers are fascinated as to why only one of the twins became sick and not the other.  Tanner spent a few days in the hospital while they did the blood draw.

“It’s going to suck,” Tanner said.

“Because he has to get poked,” Garrett explained about his brother’s blood draw for his bone marrow. “I get one but I’m going to be asleep. Hah.”

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But there's hope: Considered fatal as recently as two decades ago, aplastic anemia is becoming a far more manageable disease. Advances in drug therapies and improvements in the field of transplantation have slashed the death toll, allowing patients to live longer, fuller lives.

"We are getting better at treating aplastic anemia, either in getting rid of it or treating its symptoms," said Dr. Jaroslaw P. Maciejewski, with the Cleveland Clinic's Department of Hematologic Oncology and Blood Disorders.

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Is aranesp considered medically necessary for aplastic anemia?

Erytropoietin levels are elvevated in apalstic anemia patients. This raised the probability that additional exogenous erythropoietin may not be effective. However, despite the same concern, erythropoietin is effective in  in myelodysplastic syndrome. I reference a Japanese editorial that advocated the use of erythropoietin ( and this would include darbepoetin) for aplastic anemia.

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A better chance to find a match
Blood donors can now register online, use mail-in swab kits
By JOHN GILLIS Health Reporter
Fri. Feb 29 - 7:11 AM

FINDING A match for a person who needs donat­ed blood, cells or mar­row can be like finding a needle in a haystack.

Now potential donors can better a sick person’s odds without getting needles them­selves.

At Canadian Blood Services’ new website onematch.ca, peo­ple can register to be donors and be mailed a cheek swab kit. Donors can then take swabs and mail them back to have their DNA entered in a data­base.

Each new registrant could be a match for a person any­where in the world. Sue Smith, executive direc­tor of the OneMatch Stem Cell and Marrow Network, said it’s especially important that peo­ple from different ethnic com­munities join the registry.

“The face of Canada is changing dramatically," she said in a news release. “The more diverse One­Match is, the better the odds to save lives."

While Caucasians in Canada who need stem cell transplants have about a 75 per cent chance of finding a donor, aboriginal, black, Chinese, South Asian and Filipino Canadians don’t stand as good a chance because there aren’t enough available donors from those communi­ties.

It is more likely a donor will come from a person’s own com­munity.

Ifeoma Obi, who immigrated to Canada from Nigeria, has sickle cell disease and requires regular blood transfusions.

“I want to personally thank people for helping me enjoy a better quality of life," Ms. Obi said in a release.

“And I want them to encour­age their friends and family to become blood donors so that they too can save a life like mine."

People with sickle cell or aplastic anemia need donors who are precisely matched.

Canadian Blood Services, the Health Association of Afri­can Canadians and the United African-Canadian Women’s Association Sickle Cell Ane­mia Project held a special clin­ic Thursday to attract donors.

Source:  NovaScotiaNews.com

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FRIDAY, March 7 (HealthDay News) -- Blood stem cells, which later differentiate into all types of blood cells, originate and are nurtured in the placenta, a U.S. study finds.

This finding may help researchers replicate the specific embryonic microenvironment necessary to grow blood stem cells in the lab so doctors can treat patients with diseases such as leukemia and aplastic anemia, said senior author Dr. Hanna Mikkola, a researcher in the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

"It was a big mystery, where these cells originated. This is the first time we can really say definitively that blood stem cells are generated in the placenta. There's no more speculation," Mikkola said in a prepared statement.

The discovery, reported in the March 6 issue of Cell Stem Cell, was made in research with mice. The researchers are now working to replicate it in humans.

"If we want to fully harness the potential of embryonic stem cells to treat disease, it's critical for us to learn how to make tissue-specific stem cells. We can learn that by studying what happens during embryonic development," said Mikkola, an assistant professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology and a researcher at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.

In previous research, Mikkola and her colleagues found the placenta contained a large supply of stem cells, but the researchers weren't sure if these stem cells were created in the placenta or originated elsewhere and migrated to the placenta to self-renew.

In this new study, Mikkola's team examined a unique mouse model, a mouse embryo without a heartbeat. Because there was no blood circulation, the researchers were able to find the blood stem cells at their point of origin in the placenta.

"Using this model, we identified that the placenta has the potential to make hematopoietic [blood] stem cells with full differentiation ability to create all the major lineages of blood cells. The placenta acts as a sort of kindergarten for these newly made blood stem cells, giving them the first education they need," Mikkola explained.

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