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.

Why we need donors from all ethnic backgrounds

We urgently need to recruit more volunteer donors from all ethnic backgrounds to our Register. By recruiting more black and minority ethnic volunteers we can ensure that all UK patients have the best chance of finding a donor.

Tissue type is not random, but inherited - so patients in need of a transplant are most likely to find a compatible donor within their own ethnic community.

The African-Caribbean community is the most likely source of a donor for an African-Caribbean patient, for example. And the same is true for all of us - Chinese, Asian, Caucasian, Mediterranean, Jewish, whichever ethnic community we belong to.

The bottom line

The bottom line is – it’s much harder to find a donor for a non-Caucasian patient.

So for UK patients, awareness – and the search for a donor – has to begin with communities in the UK.

If you are from a black and minority ethnic community, please give this some serious thought : your community needs you, and you might just need it. How to join the register >

Breakdown by ethnic background of volunteers on the Anthony Nolan Register -end February 2007

Ethnic background	Total
African	3,576
African-Caribbean	11,138
Asian	12,027
Eastern European	469
Hispanic	145
Jewish	7,601
Mediterranean	3,501
Middle Eastern	412
Northern European	301,922
Oriental	1,083
Ethnic origin not declared	32,178
Other (mixed race)	8,070