If you haven't done so already and (Houston: rated, best)

[ethanw]

you are a local Houston african american PLEASE join the bone marrow registry. Is really easy and you could actualy save this girls life.

Save Valaria Fenderson » July is African American Bone Marrow Awareness Month

I am just spreading the word so others can join the registry so please don't kill this thread for whatever lame rules that you may think I've violated.

[Dopo]

Since I don't believe in races,
I need clear scientific proof that people have to get bone marrow transplant from a person of the same race.

I'm trying to find it, and all I'm reading is "People are more likely to find a match in their ethnic group"

[Dopo]

Just like I thought,
race is not a factor, but instead, ethnic groups ...
in other words, groups of people with the same genes (nowhere close to "race")
There's many people of the same "race" that have extremely different genes,
take for example Italians and Swedish or Nigerian and Jamaican.

In the same way, the ideal case is a person that comes from an inbred family (no matter the race) and everybody has the same genes.



"When fighting leukemia, evolutionary history matters"

... Because of this, the genetic match between donor and recipient in a marrow or blood stem cell transplant must be very close. Otherwise, the transplanted donor cells may start making cells that attack the recipient's body. There is a group of genes that matter most in terms of whether the transplanted cells will thrive in their new body or whether they will cause major problems for the patient. These genes are called Human Leukocyte Antigens — HLA genes for short. The closer the genetic match between the donor's and recipient's versions of the HLA genes, the more likely the transplant will go smoothly and be successful.

What are the odds of finding a match in the registry? The answer depends on one's evolutionary history. That's because, as with the rest of the human genome, HLA genes have diverged over the past 60,000 years as human populations migrated out of Africa and spread over the globe. In that process, different populations faced different pathogens and experienced natural selection favoring different gene versions. Because of this, particular HLA gene versions are much more common in some populations than in others. This means that a patient's best chance of finding a match is in someone with a similar evolutionary history.

To further complicate matters, some ethnic groups have more diversity at their HLA genes than others, and more diverse genes mean that it's harder to find a match, even within one's own ethnic group. In general, east African populations have the highest levels of genetic variation at their HLA genes, and populations further from Africa have lower levels. So, for example, people from the Middle East (which is a short jaunt from East Africa) tend to have higher levels of HLA diversity than Pacific Islander populations.