Marrow Facts

Now for the nitty gritty - here are a few marrow facts!

You give good marrow! Both men and women aged 18-40 are welcome to join our bone marrow register, but The Anthony Nolan Trust urgently needs more male donors aged 18-25. There are not enough young men on our register, meaning patients may be missing out on lifesaving treatment.

The Anthony Nolan Trust urgently needs more young people from all over the UK to join its register, especially those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.

Men’s bone marrow is preferred for a number of clinical reasons, the main one being it provides a greater volume of blood stem cells than that of female donors. This assists with faster formation of the patient’s immune system post-transplant. If there is a choice of donor for a patient in most cases the patient’s transplant centre will select a male donor.

Joining the register is easier than you think. Simply click on the registration page for details of what you need to do next.

The Anthony Nolan Trust manages and recruits new donors to the UK’s most successful bone marrow register and provides life-saving donors for patients in need of a bone marrow transplant.

For more information on how you could become a bone marrow donor click here.

Join our donor register

To offer all UK patients the best chances of a successful transplant, our Register needs :

many more donors from all ethnic backgrounds
as many committed healthy people as possible, especially young men

Our Register is very different from a blood-bank.

Our lifesaving work depends on finding a ‘match’ for patients – finding a donor whose tissue-type is compatible with the patient.

It’s not a question of quantity, but diversity - which means that anyone can make a difference.

Theoretically anyone could be the match for one of the 7,000 patients currently waiting for a transplant. In fact, you might be the only person in the world with compatible tissue-type for a patient with a life-threatening illness.

It’s like having the winning lottery ticket – but you can’t claim it for yourself. It’s the ultimate gift.

As one bone marrow donor said : ‘For me, it wasn’t that big a deal. Nothing compared to what the patient's going through.’

Most donors are surprised how straightforward it really is.