BMJ 2001;323:1185 ( 17 November )

Letters

Patient passports would alert doctors to previous bone marrow transplantation

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR---Hammadieh et al intended their letter to alert doctors to the fact that patients who have had successful bone marrow transplantation have peripheral blood cells originating from the donated bone marrow and that results of cytogenetic studies of these blood cells will relate to the donor.1

Unfortunately, only one of the two cases in the letter (case 1) was a cytogenetic case, involving a bone marrow transplant from a donor of the opposite sex. Hammadieh et al rightly pointed out that in such cases a male will have a female karyotype. However, the other case (case 2) was not a cytogenetic case. DF508 mutations in cystic fibrosis are detected by molecular genetic techniques in a DNA laboratory. DNA extracted from a blood sample before bone marrow transplantation can be used subsequently only for DNA and molecular studies. These distinctions are important to prevent the collection of an incorrect . . . [Full text of this article]
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Relevant Article

Beware of cytogenetic results after successful bone marrow transplantation
Nahed Hammadieh, Khaldoun Sharif, Masoud Afnan, Spyros Papaioannou, and Bolaride Ola
BMJ 2001 323: 285. [Extract] [Full Text]

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