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DiscussionWhat is doc looking for with a Bone Marrow Biopsy?
Blood Cancers & Disorders | Last Active: Mar 31 7:12am | Replies (34)Comment receiving replies
Replies to "I was asked to participate in a study. Taing Itacitinib as a way to help with..."
Good morning, @katgob, it’s great you’re participating in a study. I was in several myself. It’s our way of being able to assist in the forward growth of cancer treatments.
Graft vs Host Disease or GVHD is a side effect of a bone marrow transplant. To help you understand what that is a little clearer, when a person has a solid organ transplant, they will be on immunosuppressants (anti-rejection drugs) for the rest of their life so that their immune system doesn’t reject the organ.
When we a bone marrow transplant, we’re getting someone else’s immune system (the graft) and it wants to reject our body (the host). It looks as our body as an invading organism and wants to do what any healthy immune system does…take out the offender! Eventually, we are able to get off immunosuppressants as our new immune system learns to recognize the foreign proteins in our body. But in the meantime, it can create some issues and the new graft needs to be suppressed or held back from being hyper active for a while.
That’s where the Itacitinib comes into play. It is an immunosuppressant used for mild GVHD. This will be a really good trial for you to be involved in.
I strongly suggest not reading too much information about the drugs you’ll be taking. I know knowledge is power but in this case, reading about these meds can put fear in you that isn’t warranted.
As for donating blood in the future. That you’ll have to check with your doctor. My transplant doctor told me that is off the table for me. I cannot donate blood or blood products.
@katgob, we should move our conversations out of this discussion about bone marrow biopsies, over to this discussion about Bone Marrow Transplant stories. I’m going to copy and past this reply over there so we can keep it in the right place.
See you over here! https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/my-bone-marrow-transplant-bmt-story-will-you-share-yours/