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Author Topic:   Mixed-race patients struggle to find marrow donors
Glaucus
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Posts: 5819
From: Sacramento,California
Registered: Apr 2009

posted May 28, 2009 01:15 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Glaucus     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

Mixed-race patients struggle to find marrow donors

By JULIANA BARBASSA, Associated Press Writer Juliana Barbassa, Associated Press Writer – Wed May 27, 3:40 pm ET

HAYWARD, Calif. – If Nick Glasgow were white, he would have a nearly 90 percent chance of finding a matching bone marrow donor who could cure his leukemia.

But because the 28-year-old bodybuilder is one-quarter Japanese, his doctor warned him the outlook was grim. Glasgow's background would make it almost impossible to find a match, which usually comes from a patient's own ethnic group.

The doctor "didn't say it was slim-to-none. He didn't say it would be hard. He said 'zero chance,'" Glasgow's mother, Carole Wiegand, recalled with tears in her eyes. "When Nick heard that, it sent him plummeting."

At a time when the number of multiracial Americans is rising, only a tiny fraction of donors on the national bone-marrow registry are of mixed race. The National Marrow Donor Program is trying to change that by seeking more diverse donors for patients suffering from leukemia, lymphoma and other blood diseases.

"The truth is, when people of different backgrounds marry and produce offspring, it creates more types that are harder to match," said Michelle Setterholm, the program's director of scientific services. "The probability just gets lower when you have people of mixed ancestral DNA."

The number of people who identify themselves as multiracial in the United States has grown from 3.9 million in 2000, the first year the census included the category, to 5.2 million in 2008. Mixed-race people account for 1.6 percent of the U.S. population.

The donor program has been pushing for years to recruit more racial minorities and mixed-race donors. So far, multiracial volunteers make up just 3 percent of the 7 million people on the registry.

That is higher than the percentage of mixed-race people in the U.S. But there are so many possible racial and ethnic combinations that finding a match can still be extremely difficult.

The reason that mixed-heritage patients are so hard to match can be found in the immune system.

Populations in different parts of the world developed certain proteins, or markers, that are part of the body's natural defenses. These markers help the immune system determine which cells are foreign and should be rejected.

A match between two people who share many markers will reduce the risk of the donor and recipient cells attacking each other. Because certain markers tend to cluster in particular ethnic groups, matches are most often found among people of shared backgrounds. Multiracial patients often have uncommon profiles and a much harder time finding a donor.

About 6,000 patients in the U.S. are awaiting a bone marrow match.

Finding compatible organs for transplant is simpler. Organ matches rely essentially on blood type, which is not related to race.

Glasgow's grandfather, an Army soldier from South Carolina, fell in love while stationed in Japan after World War II and married across racial lines at a time when it was illegal to do so in many states.

From his Japanese grandmother, Glasgow got the almond shape of his eyes and cell markers that set him apart from most other whites. From his white grandparents, he got markers that set him apart from other Japanese.

Geary Moya's background — part Navajo, part Mexican — has kept his life on hold since 2005, when he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Chemotherapy has put his cancer in remission, but a bone marrow transplant is his only hope for a cure.

"I can't work. I can't plan. I just don't know what tomorrow will hold for me," said Moya, a 51-year-old former manager of an appliance company.

He often visits bone marrow drives, where he tries to encourage prospective donors to sign up.

"If it's not for me, it'll help someone," he said last week as he stopped by a booth registering potential bone marrow donors at California State University in Hayward. "There's a whole list of people out there waiting for someone to come along."

Moya watched and answered questions as a trickle of students filled out forms with their health history and ethnic makeup before swabbing the inside of their cheeks to collect the genetic material that will be used to match them to waiting patients.

If a match is found, they will undergo a painful procedure in which doctors withdraw liquid marrow from the back of their pelvic bones.

Among those filling out donor forms was Abe Rindal, a retired engineer who heard through friends about Glasgow.

Rindal was born to a Norwegian-American father and Japanese mother who met in Japan after World War II. They started a family before interracial marriage bans were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1967. Rindal remembers meeting only two other people with similar ethnicity.

"It was socially unacceptable back then," he said.

The chance to help someone of similar ethnicity appealed to Rindal. He not only filled out his form and swabbed his cheeks, he also sent test kits to his four siblings and their children in the hope they might be a match for Glasgow.

At the hospital, Wiegand prays for her son. Her niece started a Facebook group that has collected upward of 1,000 members interested in helping. The Asian American Donor Program has been contacting Japanese-American organizations, and large corporations such as Cisco have reached out to their employees via e-mail.

If chemotherapy sends Glasgow's cancer into remission, he might have months to find a match. If not, he might have far less time.

"I just keep thinking, `Please, everyone, get into that database,'" his mother said. "I just know there's a match out there somewhere for him."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090527/ap_on_he_me/mixed_race_donors

Raymond

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Xodian
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posted May 28, 2009 01:39 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Xodian     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
This might be kinda offtopic but I find it interesting how the given article you posted properly used the technical term for every race except for Caucasians. I don't know about you but I personally think its odd for current "political correct" world to allow something like this to slip by .

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Glaucus
Knowflake

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From: Sacramento,California
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posted May 28, 2009 02:12 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Glaucus     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
shrugs

I didn't notice

black or African American wasn't even mentioned in the post.

I am just baffled about this:

"The number of people who identify themselves as multiracial in the United States has grown from 3.9 million in 2000, the first year the census included the category, to 5.2 million in 2008. Mixed-race people account for 1.6 percent of the U.S. population."


I can't be one of only 1.6 percent

There has to be a lot more mixed-race people than that.


I thought about maybe I should be a donor


my actual ethnic composition is Black,Portuguese,English,German,French,Italian,Puerto Rican,Native American. There might possibly be some Jewish.

Raymond

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katatonic
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posted May 28, 2009 12:14 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
this may seem a petty point but jewish is not a biological trait. it is a choice of religion. jews come from all races and ethnicities. and black is a pretty broad term too.

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Glaucus
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From: Sacramento,California
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posted May 28, 2009 12:48 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Glaucus     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I disagree

Jewish can be about religion and/or ethnic group.


A Jew (Hebrew: יְהוּדִי‎, Yehudi (sg.); יְהוּדִים, Yehudim (pl.); Ladino: ג׳ודיו, Djudio (sg.); ג׳ודיוס, Djudios (pl.); Yiddish: יִיד, Yid (sg.); יִידן, Yidn (pl.))[3] is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish people and the religion of Judaism are strongly interrelated, and converts to Judaism have been absorbed into the Jewish community throughout the millennia.

In Jewish tradition, Jewish ancestry is traced to the Biblical patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the second millennium BCE. The Jews enjoyed two periods of political autonomy in their national homeland, the Land of Israel, during ancient history. The first era spanned from 1350 to 586 BCE, and encompassed the periods of the Judges, the United Monarchy, and the Divided Monarchy of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, ending with the destruction of the First Temple. The second era was the period of the Hasmonean Kingdom spanning from 140 to 37 BCE. Since the destruction of the First Temple, the diaspora has been the home of most of the world's Jews.[4] Except in the modern State of Israel, established in 1948, Jews are a minority in every country in which they live and they have frequently experienced persecution throughout history, resulting in a population that fluctuated both in numbers and distribution over the centuries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew


as far as Black, it's probably West African. Most black slaves came from West Africa.


Raymond

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katatonic
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posted May 28, 2009 02:02 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
well as the daughter of a blonde blue-eyed ex-jew i would have to disagree with you. a large portion of the jewish community came from eastern europe and the fact that a religion starts in one place does not make it a racial trait. christianity also started in the same place.

when you talk semites, they span several religions. when you talk jews, they span all races. judaism is a religion. there is nothing biological about it.

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Glaucus
Knowflake

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From: Sacramento,California
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posted May 28, 2009 02:20 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Glaucus     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I agree to disagree

I was talking about the actual Semitic people. The Hebrews. the ancient Israelites.

btw. There is a disease called Familial Dysautonomia,and that is said to be connected to Ashkenazi Jews. That is that it affects primarily Ashkenazi Jews. http://www.ujc.org/page.aspx?id=29451


a lot of people disagree about Jewish is only a religion or it also an ethnicity

a lot of of people think it's just a religion,and a lot of people think that it's both.

A person of any ethnic background can be of Jewish religion. A person of Jewish ethnic background can be of any religion.

Raymond

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Glaucus
Knowflake

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From: Sacramento,California
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posted May 28, 2009 02:38 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Glaucus     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I found this:


Genetic studies of DNA
See also: Y-chromosomal Aaron, Genealogical DNA test, and Matrilineality

Despite the evident diversity displayed by the world's distinct Jewish populations, both culturally and physically, genetic studies have demonstrated most of these to be genetically related to one another, having ultimately originated from a common ancient Israelite population that underwent geographic branching and subsequent independent evolutions.[3]

A study published by the National Academy of Sciences found that "the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population", and suggested that "most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora".[3] Researchers expressed surprise at the remarkable genetic uniformity they found among modern Jews, no matter where the diaspora has become dispersed around the world.[3]

Moreover, DNA tests have demonstrated substantially less inter-marriage in most of the various Jewish ethnic divisions over the last 3,000 years than in other populations.[4] The findings lend support to traditional Jewish accounts accrediting their founding to exiled Israelite populations, and counters theories that many or most of the world's Jewish populations were founded by entirely gentile populations that adopted the Jewish faith, as in the notable case of the historic Khazars.[4][5] Although groups such as the Khazars could have been absorbed into modern Jewish populations — in the Khazars' case, absorbed into the Ashkenazim — it is unlikely that they formed a large percentage of the ancestors of modern Ashkenazi Jews, and much less that they were the genesis of the Ashkenazim.[6]

Even the archetype of Israelite-origin is also beginning to be reviewed for some Jewish populations amid newer studies. Previously, the Israelite origin identified in the world's Jewish populations was attributed only to the males who had migrated from the Middle East and then forged the current known communities with "the women from each local population whom they took as wives and converted to Judaism".[7] Research in Ashkenazi Jews has suggested that, in addition to the male founders, significant female founder ancestry might also derive from the Middle East, with about 40% of the current Ashkenazi population descended matrilineally from just four women, or "founder lineages", that were "likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool" originating in the Near East in the first and second centuries CE.[7]

Points in which Jewish groups differ is largely in the source and proportion of genetic contribution from host populations.[8][9] As examples, the Teimanim differ from other Mizrahim, as well as from Ashkenazim, in the proportion of sub-Saharan African gene types which have entered their gene pools.[8] Among Yemenites, the average stands at 35% lineages within the past 3,000 years.[8] Yemenite Jews, as a traditionally Arabic-speaking community of local Yemenite and Israelite ancestries,[9] are included within the findings, though they average a quarter of the frequency of the non-Jewish Yemenite sample.[8] In Ashkenazi Jews, the proportion of male indigenous European genetic admixture amounts to around 0.5% per generation over an estimated 80 generations, and a total admixture estimate around 12.5%.[3] The only exception to this amongst Jewish communities is in the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews); a 1999 genetic study came to the conclusion that "the distinctiveness of the Y-chromosome haplotype distribution of Beta Israel Jews from conventional Jewish populations and their relatively greater similarity in haplotype profile to non-Jewish Ethiopians are consistent with the view that the Beta Israel people descended from ancient inhabitants of Ethiopia who converted to Judaism."[10][11] Another 2001 study did, however, find a possible genetic similarity between 11 Ethiopian Jews and 4 Yemenite Jews from the population samples.[12]

DNA analysis further determined that modern Jews of the priesthood tribe — "Cohanim" — share a common ancestor dating back about 3,000 years.[13] This result is consistent for all Jewish populations around the world.[13] The researchers estimated that the most recent common ancestor of modern Cohanim lived between 1000 BCE (roughly the time of the Biblical Exodus) and 586 BCE, when the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple.[14] They found similar results analyzing DNA from Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews.[14] The scientists estimated the date of the original priest based on genetic mutations, which indicated that the priest lived roughly 106 generations ago, between 2,650 and 3,180 years ago depending whether one counts a generation as 25 or 30 years.[14]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_ethnic_divisions#Genetic_studies_of_DNA

I wouldn't mind getting genetic testing.

I suspect that my mom's mother was part Jewish. The thing is that my mom never knew her mother. I found out that my grandmother's mother's name was Ruth Rosenthal after getting my grandmother's birth certificate while trying to find her and her firsborn daughter for my mother. I was told that it was a Jewish name,and so it's possible that she was part Jewish. There is no telling if my grandmother lied to my grandfather about her ancestry too.

She has Mercury in Pisces oppose/contraparallel Neptune in Virgo, and so she was probably capable of lying,telling stories,and deceiving others.

There are too many things about my family background that are unsolved. maybe transiting Pluto in my 4th, Solar Return Pluto in 4th might indicate that I can solve the family mysteries.

I don't like knowing very little about my heritage. I never knew my father nor his family. All I know is that he was a Black Creole (Black,French,Native American) man born in New Orleans,Louisiana and grew up in Lake Charles,Louisiana.


Raymond

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katatonic
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posted May 28, 2009 04:50 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
schwartz is also considered a jewish name but in fact it can be traced back to - ellis island! where the guards gave it to various black-haired types from languages they couldn't understand. same goes for pollack - given to poles or those who appeared to be polish by the immigration people on arrival.

you can argue that jews married only jews in various eras and locales but there were always ruling classes who raped the women, intermarriages that defied the customs, and converts who came into the religion.

as you say, we are all mixed. but semites include all the southern mediterranean peoples and religions...

i think it must be fascinating tracing your lineage back, raymond. such a rich minefield!

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Glaucus
Knowflake

Posts: 5819
From: Sacramento,California
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posted May 29, 2009 02:48 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Glaucus     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

good points


who knows.....we could be distant relatives. you never know.


besides all of us are related any way.


Raymond

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