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Bone marrow drive aims to help infant

01/26/2006 - Friends and family of Tristan Campbell, who is four months old, have established a bone marrow drive sponsored by the National Marrow Foundation from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, February 25, at the VFW Oakville Post 7330; 85 Davis St., Oakville.

Richard and Courtney Campbell, whose baby, Tristan has AML leukemia, are reaching out seeking help for their son. The drive is hoped to find a match for Tristan and the other patients searching for a match.

Rich, an IT manager , and Courtney, a high school counselor at Amity Regional, were Watertown High School sweethearts. In May of 2003, they were married. Two years later, on September 27, 2005, they were blessed with their first child, Tristan.

In early December, while Tristan and his mom were out for the afternoon, he began having a seizure. They drove to the emergency room where the Campbells were told that if they'd gotten there any later it might have been too late. The ER stabilized him but he needed to be evaluated at Connecticut Children's Medical Center for further testing. At that point the medical team thought he may have had a bad infection or pneumonia. He was then air lifted to CCMC and by the time the family got there to be with their son, they were immediately told he would need an emergency blood transfusion. Further tests showed that Tristan had acute myeloid leukemia, a rare form of the cancer, and especially rare in infants.

Since Tristan does not have a sibling who could be a perfect bone marrow donor, he will need a bone marrow transplant using the national registry. He has since begun an aggressive chemotherapy protocol that is planned to last for the next 12 months and will be in the hospital for the majority of that time. AML has different subtypes, and he has one of the harder ones to treat. In addition, he has a genetic translocation, which further makes it even more difficult to treat and keep in remission.

Although the chemotherapy treatment is a good way to bring leukemia into remission, doctors alike have said the best chances of survival lie with a successful bone marrow transplant.

When volunteers join the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), they are tested to determine their HLA type. The first step in the process is a tube of blood is collected from the volunteer donor and tested to identify which HLA markers are present. If the donor is matched to a patient further blood work is collected. If a successful match is found, the last phase of donation is the collection of bone marrow or stem cells. Information on each potential donor is added to the NMDP Registry, which can then be searched by physicians who are considering a transplant for their patients. Donors need to be between the ages of 18-61, in good general health and willing to donate to any patient searching for a match. For further information on the NMDP, call 1-800-676-4545 or visit www.marrow.org.

Those interested in making donations to a fund that has been established in order to benefit Tristan's fight against leukemia, may send them to the Tristan Campbell Trust, P.O. Box 145, Watertown, 06795

Petrochemicals linked to leukemia in young adults

Wed Aug 2, 2006 - NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Residential exposure to petrochemicals is associated with an elevated risk of leukemia among adults in their 20s, according to a new report.

Previous studies have linked workplace exposure to petrochemicals with an increased risk of leukemia. By contrast, relatively few studies have looked at the impact on leukemia risk of petrochemical exposure in places where people reside, and the studies that have done so included only crude measures of exposure.

Dr. David C. Christiani, from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues looked at this issue in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, an area with four oil refineries. The study, which included 171 patients with leukemia and 410 unaffected 'control' subjects, focused on the risk in those aged up to 19 years and those between 20 and 29.

The researchers used geographic information tools to develop a procedure for estimating petrochemical exposure at the individual level, they explain in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

The exposure measurement accounted for a number of factors, including how much people moved around, their length of stay at each residence, distance to petrochemical plants, prevailing wind direction on a monthly basis, and the effect of multiple pollution sources.

Residential exposure to petrochemicals was not linked to leukemia in the younger age group, the team reports. However, in the older group, as the exposure opportunity score increased by one unit, the risk of leukemia rose by 54 percent.

The researchers suggest that future studies consider other sources of indoor or mobile pollution to better understand the carcinogenic effects of petrochemical exposure.

SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, August 1, 2006.

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