Leukaemia is essentially a cancer of the white blood cells.

The marrow in our bones produces 3 types of cells;

Red cells – gives our skin a nice colour & carries oxygen round the body.
Platelets – enable our blood to clot when we bleed.
White cells – fight infections

In leukaemia, the bone marrow over-produces white cells that aren’t mature enough to do their job.

The numbers of these immature cells keep increasing & therefore suppresses the red cells & platelets & they are then unable to increase and do there work.

The immature white cells take over and fill the bone marrow, until eventually they go into the blood and are carried around the body causing tiredness, paleness & the inability to fight infection.

We have a few different types of white cell which help us fight infection and disease.

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) is a cancer of the lymphoid cells while Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) affects the myeloid cells.

Someone suffering with Leukaemia might need a bone marrow transplant to consolidate the treatment. Bone marrow is the soft, jelly-like tissue that is found in the hollow centres of certain bones. It’s the home of what are called ‘stem cells’ which are the building blocks of blood itself.

Without the bone marrow, blood can not be produced, so when things go wrong and the bone marrow becomes damaged, the patient must receive a stem cell transplant to survive.

Donors can give stem cells in one of two ways;

By donations of stem cells directly from circulating blood via a machine (if you are a platelet donor you will be familiar with this machine_ – no need for a general anaesthetic.
OR
By donation of bone marrow itself, which involves the removal of stem cells from hip bones under a general anaesthetic?

The British Bone Marrow Registry (BBMR) is a division of the National Blood Service which works in conjunction with all the other UK bone marrow/blood donor registries & holds details of potential donors all around the UK. It is also part of an international network that can perform searches around the world to find suitable donors. When you are on one of the registers there is no need to register with another – if you are a match, they will find you!

The following websites will give you further information about Leukaemia, the treatments and how you can get involved:

www.clic.org.uk || www.teenagecancertrust.org || www.cancerbacup.org.uk || www.blood.co.uk