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Article: With Bone Marrow Transplants, Some Cases Are Cured
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- September 12, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1993 Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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Though it is not widely known, sickle-cell anemia can be cured in
certain patients. But to accomplish this, patients have to undergo a
potentially risky and expensive transplant of bone marrow, the body's
blood-producing tissue.
"The transplant gives patients a brand-new `factory' to produce
normal red cells," explained Dr. F. Leonard Johnson, a University of
Chicago Hospitals hematologist.
Johnson performed the first successful marrow transplant on an
8-year-old patient, who had not only sickle cell but also blood
cancer, at St. Jude Children's Research Center in Memphis in 1982.
Both conditions were cured.
Johnson performed another procedure last December at the U. of
C. on Tanisha ...