Connecting the miracle of life. Connecting the miracle of life. Connecting the miracle of life. Connecting the miracle of life. This process involves testing the patient's siblings and parents to determine if the patient has an HLA-identical match within the family.
Patients share a portion of their genetic information with family members.
The closer the relation, the greater the possibility of an HLA match, but even distant relatives may provide a suitable match. The more family members who are tested, the greater the probability of finding a match. It can therefore be useful to recruit as many family members as possible to volunteer to be tested. If a family member is HLA-identical with the patient, GeneScreen laboratory will perform further testing to insure that this donor is the best match within the family. If an HLA match is not found within the immediate or extended family, typically a search is initiated to find an unrelated, volunteer donor with the same HLA type as the patient.