Aplastic Anemia

"Pints for Half Pints: Giving Kids Another Chance" is an America’s Blood Centers’ campaign focusing on the blood needs of children. Of the 69 million children in the United States, hundreds of thousands suffer from various life-threatening illness that are treated with blood transfusions.

Part of Bloodlines’ mission is to share information about blood and patients who must receive blood. For the next several months Bloodlines will feature a specific childhood illness that require blood transfusions as a part of their treatment.

Aplastic anemia is a very rare disease, occurring in only two to six cases per million people. It is usually found in younger patients. Aplastic anemia is characterized by injury to the bone marrow. Fat cells replace bone marrow, which is the factory for the body’s blood cells. It causes a reduction in all types of blood cells, causing weakness, shortness of breath and fatigue from anemia, and infections.

Causes can be a virus, self-attack by the immune system (autoimmune disease) or exposure to chemicals like benzene. The condition is life-threatening.

Treatment options are bone marrow transplants and immunosuppressant drugs, but support of the patient requires frequent transfusion. Katy Hubbell of Fisher received a bone marrow transplant to treat her aplastic anemia. In the course of her therapy she has received 37 transfusions of red blood cells and 78 transfusions of apheresed platelets.