What Are the Treatments Available for Severe Aplastic Anemia?
In order to prevent infections and bleeding, initially patients with SAA receive transfusions (platelets and red blood cells) and antibiotics. Once the patient is in stable condition, the treatment consists of drug therapy or bone marrow transplantation (BMT), or both. Drug therapy involves use of medications (anti-thymocyte globulin, cyclosporine, steroids), which suppress the immune system and allow the blood forming capacity of BM to recover. These medications need to be administered for a course of several months and are combined with a growth factor (G-CSF), which stimulates white blood cells to grow. Drug treatment, however, is effective in increasing the blood counts only in some patients. More importantly, the response may be short-lived and pre-malignant and malignant conditions may occur many years after treatment. Therefore, drug therapy is used by most physicians only in children who do not have a matched sibling donor, whose cells can be used as a source of stem cells for
