This involves giving patients high doses of chemotherapy to destroy their abnormal bone marrow. They then are given donor marrow, preferably from a sibling, and a three-month course of immunosuppressive drugs. Patients face a 5 percent to 10 percent chance of dying. Hospital stays last up to 40 days, which makes the procedure very expensive. Patients temporarily lose their hair, experience severe mouth sores and can't eat for weeks.
Most patients become sterile.
There's a chance of developing potentially fatal graft versus host disease. What we're trying to do is reduce this price. Rather than use toxic chemotherapy, the researchers rely on the donor's immune system to gradually kill the patient's defective marrow and replace it with healthy marrow. The procedure began on an outpatient basis, and then Miss Herrara was briefly hospitalized as the therapy progressed, Dr. Krishnamurti said. During the procedure, she didn't experience the mouth sores that commonly afflict chemotherapy patients.