The story of First adult that was cured of sickle cell disease

          

Iesha Thomas, a Chicago woman has been in and out of hospitals battling sickle cell disease since she was only 8 months old. 
Thomas, 33(as at June, 2012), had her first sickle cell crisis when she was just 8 months old. Her disease became progressively worse as an adult, particularly after the birth of her daughter. She has spent most of her adult life in and out of hospitals with severe pain and has relied on repeated red blood cell transfusions. Her sickle cell disease also caused bone damage requiring two hip replacements.

“I just want to be at home with my daughter every day and every night,” said Thomas, who depends on family to help care for her daughter during her frequent hospitalizations.

This type of stem cell transplant is only possible for patients who have a healthy sibling who is a compatible donor.

Thomas’ sister was a match and agreed to donate blood stem cells through a process called leukapheresis. Several days prior to leukapheresis, Thomas’ sister was given drugs to increase the number of stem cells released into the bloodstream. Her blood was then processed through a machine that collects white cells, including stem cells. The stem cells were frozen until the transplant.

“Now, with this chemotherapy-free transplant, we are curing adults with sickle cell disease, and we see that their quality of life improves vastly within just one month of the transplant,” says Dr. Damiano Rondelli, professor of medicine at UIC, who performed Thomas’s transplant.

This summer, 33-year-old Thomas became the first adult to be cured of sickle cell disease with a chemotherapy-free procedure at University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System (UI Health), the University reported. Thomas is one of 12 adult patients cured of sickle cell disease as part of a clinical trial at UI Health that used a unique procedure for stem cell transplantation from healthy tissue matched from a sibling donor.