title: Unrelated-donor marrow transplants: the experience of the National Marrow Donor Program.
abstract: As of January 1996, more than 4,000 marrow transplants have been performed using unrelated donors provided by the NMDP. With more than 1.9 million donors listed in the registry, over 70% of patients now find an HLA-A, -B, -DR phenotypic match at the initial search. The success rate is dramatically lower for patients in racial minorities. For instance, African-Americans find donors only 34% of the time on the initial search. Analysis of the first 462 transplants, showed disease-free survival rates at 2 years to be approximately 40% in low-risk patients, and 20% in high-risk patients. A more recent analysis in single centers shows an increase in the probabilities to 60-70%. This increase in success is likely related to a number of factors, including the ability to control complications, such as GVHD, plus an increase in accuracy of HLA typing primarily based on DNA-based methodology.
authors.affiliation: The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA.
authors.forename: P G
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Beatty
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kollman
authors.forename: C W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Howe
mesh_terms: D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation / Q000276:immunology / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006680:HLA Antigens; D006650:Histocompatibility Testing; D006801:Humans; D019520:Living Donors; D044469:Racial Groups; D012042:Registries; D009927:Tissue and Organ Procurement; D014481:United States
chemical_list: D006680:HLA Antigens