Pancytopenia MDS may reflect stromal changes and longer time to engraftment post transplant

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It has recently been shown that patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) may find that their time to stem cell engraftment post transplant is delayed beyond that seen by Acute Myeloid Leukemiaterm transplant patients (a more serious disease.) The thought behind these results is that the bone marrow's stroma (matrix cells) was not providing sufficient signal to the blood progenitor cells before the transplant took place, whereas the AML patients may have had progenitor cells with more serious mutations in their dna which would not have responded properly even if the stroma's signals were being provided. Therefore in many AML patients, transplanted stem cells are able to engraft quickly because the matrix environment is healthy and able to support the division and growth of new progenitors.

Please inform your physician of these findings. 

[via Bone Marrow Transplantation - Abstract of article: Time to engraftment following allogeneic stem cell transplantation is significantly longer in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome than with acute myeloid leukemia]:

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