Healthy stem cells donated by German man give Kerala girl …

A 16-year-old girl from Kerala has got a new lease of life, thanks to a benevolent gesture from a 55-year-old German man. The teenage girl was suffering from an advanced stage of leukaemia or bone marrow cancer and underwent a transfusion of healthy stem cells donated by the German national.

She surely is lucky: Even though doctors treating her could not find matching stem cells among more than 70,000 donors registered in India, they finally could locate with the help of an international agency the only one donor whose stem cells matched perfectly with those of the girl patient.

"This is perhaps one of the rarest transnational stem cell donation cases in the country. As there was no matching stem cells from among more than 70,000 listed in a registry in India, we sought help from German-based international registry DKMS," Neeraj Sidharthan, head of stem cell transplant unit at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre here, told IANS.

"We have been told that this person was the only one whose stem cells matched with the girl's," he said.

After receiving the healthy stem cells from the 55-year-old German man, the girl has since been completely cured of the life-threatening ailment.

"She comes to me for routine check-up and she is doing perfectly fine," said Sidharthan.

Recalling the case, Sidharthan said the girl had a relapsed acute myeloid leukaemia and her chances of survival were slim.

"We suggested allogenic stem cell transplantation, or transfer of stem cells from a healthy person, to save the patient. It's easy since the donar stem cells come either from a sibling or parents. However, in this girl's case, it did not happen," said the doctor.

The doctor finally contacted Germany-based international registry DKMS, and as luck would have it, just one perfectly matching donar stem cells were found.

Once the donor was finalised, the girl was admitted to the institute for pre-transplant tests and administeration of chemotherapeutic drugs to prevent side effects, since the stem cells were to come from an international donor of the opposite sex.

Read more:
Healthy stem cells donated by German man give Kerala girl ...