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Suicide, accidents linked to bone marrow transplant Those who undergo bone marrow transplants have shown an increased tendency to depression and committing suicide in Europe
People who have had a bone marrow transplant may be at increased risk for suicides and accidental deaths, according to a new study suggesting these patients may need extra attention to the mental and physical after-effects of their battles with disease. In a group of almost 300,000 European bone marrow transplant recipients, researchers found that patients killed themselves at twice the rates seen in the general European population, and slightly more died in accidents. Dr. David Porter, a marrow transplantation expert who was not involved in the research, told Reuters Health the findings are "eye opening," because suicides and accidental deaths aren't often talked about in the transplant community. "It's not something that transplant physicians would immediately assume," said Porter, from the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Bone marrow transplantation is used to treat a number of conditions, including leukemia and other cancers, sickle cell disease and immune diseases. The procedure involves replacing dysfunctional blood cells with healthy stem cells from the patient or a donor, in the hope they will create new, healthy blood and immune cells. Past research has found that more than 20 percent of patients have symptoms related to depression after their marrow transplant, the new study's authors write in the journal Cancer. Those same depression signs are risk factors for suicide in the general population, which suggests transplant patients could also be at risk for suicide, explains the team led by Dr. André Tichelli at University Hospital Basel in Switzerland. In addition, the researchers say, patients may be physically and mentally weaker than they were before the transplant, which could put them at risk for accidents. For the new study, Tichelli and his colleagues used a European database of 294,922 bone marrow transplant patients from 1980 to 2009. Almost all had a blood cancer. Overall, 116,149 patients died during the study. Included in those deaths are 189 suicides and 125 accidental deaths. The rest died from a relapse of their disease or a transplant-related cause. The researchers found there were about 21 suicides per 100,000 people who had a marrow transplant. That compared to about 9 per 100,000 people in the general population of Europe. (For more Life & Style news and updates, follow us on Twitter: @AhramLifestyleor our Facebook page) http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/69186.aspx
