An estimated 70,000 adults suffering from sickle cell anemia may find relief through bone marrow transplants, according to recent news reports.
A team from the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that it has developed a transplant procedure and used it to cure nine of the first 10 patients studied. About 200 children have been cured of sickle cell with transplants, but the procedure was too harsh for adults with severe cases of the disease. But the new procedure is less toxic.
