Bone marrow volunteer donors recruitment in northern Portugal.

Abstract

Allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) has been used to treat a variety of malignant and non-malignant diseases, particularly of the blood and immune system. However, as no more than 30% of patients will have HLA-identical sibling, much effort has been devoted to the establishment of bone marrow registries for HSCT. In 2010, there are more than 15 million bone marrow donors and cord blood units in the in the Bone Marrow Donors Worldwide (BMDW) database. Participants are 64 stem cell donor registries from 44 countries, and 44 cord blood banks from 26 countries. The North Center of Histocompatibility (CHN) is one of the three Histocompatibility Centers which made the Portuguese Registry of bone marrow donors--National Center of Bone Marrow, Stem Cells and Cord Blood Donors (CEDACE). The aim of this paper is to present the first 110000 donors recruited by the CHN to the CEDACE. In 2010, the recruited donors throw the CHN distribution by age are 14.6%, 38.7%, 37.8% and 8.9%, for the age groups [18;25], [25;35], [35;45] and = 45, respectively. The 110000 bone marrow donors recruited in the North of Portugal by the CHN are a contribution to the worldwide effort that is the BMDW. Young, preferably male donors, should be targeted as replacement of the donors who retire because of old age or for other reasons. Also, the quest for donors with the so-called unique phenotypes is a challenge for all registries. Portuguese areas which show particularly high levels of phenotype diversity or those in which alleles of haplotypes underrepresented in the registry are identified can and should be targeted for the optimization of recruitment strategies.