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By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
African Americans have a higher incidence of certain blood cancers and blood disorders compared to other ethnic groups. For example, leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, or sickle cell anemia, and beta-thalassemia, the latter which are genetic blood disorders that are more common in people of African descent. These disorders affect the production of hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the body.
However, outcomes between different ethnic groups are often dissimilar, and according to medical experts, Black/African American patients tend to fare the worst. A primary reason underlying this increased mortality is a lack of access to allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HCT), which for many, is the best chance of a cure.
Researchers and statistics show that people of color and African Americans burdened with blood cancers and other diseases have only a 23% or less chance of finding a bone marrow match on the National Registry. Interracial patients have an even lower chance of finding a match. In contrast, Asian or Pacific Islanders have a 41% chance, Hispanics or Latinos have a 46% chance, American Indian and Alaska Natives have a 57% chance, and whites have a 77% chance of finding a match.
One potential treatment option for these blood disorders and blood cancers is a bone marrow transplant. A bone marrow transplant involves replacing a patient’s diseased or damaged bone marrow with healthy bone marrow from a donor. Finding a suitable bone marrow donor can be challenging, particularly for African Americans, as they are underrepresented in bone marrow registries.
This underrepresentation means that African Americans are less likely to find a matching donor, which can make it more difficult to access potentially life-saving bone marrow transplants. Therefore, increasing the number of African Americans in bone marrow registries is crucial to improving the chances of finding a matching donor and improving outcomes for those with blood disorders and blood cancers.
Thousands of people die each year because they can’t find a donor. Ethnicity is the key to a perfect match between donor and recipient. The primary reason for these tragic statistics is the lack of bone marrow donors from African Americans, people of color, and mixed-race communities. According to Dr. Abeer Madbouly, Ph.D., principal bioinformatics scientist for Be the Match, the odds are higher for a patient to find a successful match within their ethnic or racial group “because of how nature works and how the immune system evolves.”
“The most dominant evolutionary theory right now is that we all came out of Africa. So, it’s the oldest immune system…the oldest humans on Earth are African, which means their immune systems are probably more diverse because of what they’ve been exposed to than any other ethnic group that exists right now,” she explained.
Adding to the difficulty in finding an HLA match for African Americans, Madbouly said, “African Americans are historically a mix of African ancestry and European ancestry that happened several generations ago. So now when you add this mix to an originally very diverse genetic system, you add more diversity to the pool.”
This is where the disparities begin to reveal themselves. Only 20% of Black cancer patients are able to find an unrelated, matched donor through donor registries.
“The majority of the donors that we have on the registry in terms of race and ethnicity are white,” says Madbouly. “That is about two-thirds of the donor registry right now. The remaining third is basically encompassing all other races and ethnicities.”
According to experts, informing and making underrepresented communities more aware of bone marrow transplants and becoming donors can level the playing field for bone marrow transplants. By becoming a registered bone marrow donor, individuals can potentially help save the life of someone in need.
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