The Japan News by The Yomiuri Shimbun
Star’s leukemia diagnosis lifts interest in marrow donation
The office of the Japan Marrow Donor Program (JMDP) has received a flood of inquiries asking how to be a donor, in response to the recent announcement by teen star swimmer Rikako Ikee that she has been diagnosed with leukemia.
The JMDP received six inquires on Feb. 11 but the number suddenly jumped to 270 the next day after the 18-yearold gold medal hopeful for the 2020 Olympics made her announcement.
The office continued to receive inquires, with about 100 phone calls on Feb. 13.
“We expect many people to understand and support [our efforts],” a JMDP official said.
According to the Tokyo-based office, it has been receiving queries by phone and email since Ikee tweeted about her disease.
High traffic also made it difficult to connect to their website.
Leukemia patients cannot produce normal blood cells, and one form of treatment involves hematopoietic stem cells — meaning cells that give rise to blood cells — being harvested from a donor’s healthy bone marrow then injected into the patient by infusion.
The JMDP solicits donors of hematopoietic stem cells under a registry system. As of the end of December last year, there were about 490,000 registered donors and 2,930 registered patients waiting for treatment.
However, it is necessary for the types of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) between donors and patients to match before treatment can be undergone.
The chance of a successful HLA match is one in four between siblings, and the probability becomes quite low between unrelated individuals, only one in several hundred or one in tens of thousand.
The JMDP has been urged to increase the number of donors.