Bone Marrow Disease – Symptoms, Types and other risk factors

Bone marrow is the body’s primary manufacturing plant for white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets. It is soft fatty tissue which is found inside the hollow shafts of bones such as: chest, hip bone and thigh bone. In the marrow fibrous tissue forms a sponge like network. This sponge like network supports primitive cells called haematopoietic cells. If you have bone-marrow disease, than the steam cells can develop into red blood cells, platelets and white blood cells. Red blood cells are carrying oxygen through your body. White cells fight infections. Platelets help blood clotting. When you are having bone marrow disease, than you have problems with the stem cells and how they develop. There are many symptoms of bone-marrow disease and they can be very different. It depends on the type of the person. If you have bone morrow, you should visit your doctor to give you medical treatment. The medical treatment depends on how serious is your bone marrow disease and how deep are your symptoms. The treatment can involve blood transfusions, medicines and bone marrow transplant.

Bone Marrow – Risk factors, Symptoms and Types

Risk factors for bone marrow: The number of people which are having bone marrow disease is increasing as the years are passing by. Bone-marrow disease is more common in children and younger adults than in older people [1]. If it is found bone-marrow disease in older people, this would be caused after previous some bone bones were originating from another location in the body. Risk factors for bone cancers are:

• Mutation in a gene known as the retinoblastoma gene or other genes [2]
• Previous treatment with radiation therapy [3]
• Previous chemotherapy with drugs known or other genes [4]
• Associated conditions, such as Li-Fraumeni syndrome, Paget’s disease of bone, hereditary retinoblastoma, Diamond-Blackfan anemia, tuberous sclerosis and Rothmund-Thomson syndrome

What causes bone marrow disease?

As like the other disease there is not just one reason for having bone marrow disease. In general, bone-marrow disease appears because when the normal cells growth and proliferation are disrupted. This allows to abnormal cells to divide and grow uncontrollably. In the bone marrow disease are involved also many hereditary and environmental factors.

What are the bone marrow disease symptoms and signs? If you have bone-marrow disease, then you feel lot of pain. The pain can increase through the day, especially at the nights or when you are physically active. Sometimes this pain can last with years, before someone is being diagnosed with bone marrow disease. Sometimes the bone cancer is detected when X-rays are performed for another reason. When you have bone marrow you can feel a lump, mass or swelling around the bone-marrow area. Bone fractures can also occur at the side of the bone marrow because this side has disease become more weak and easy to be broken. In some rare cases bone-marrow disease is caused by compression of disruption of blood vessels and nerves in the affected area. These symptoms can include tenderness, tingling, numbness or a decrease in blood flow on the site of the tumor, causing a cold hand or foot with absent or weak pulses.

Types of Bone Marrow disease: Bone marrow disease is serious disease. It can also spread from another part of your body to your bones. To know if you are affected with this disease it is always a good idea to visit your doctor and check yourself. If you have bone marrow disease, than your doctor will give you the right medical treatment for your condition. Following are some types of bone marrow diseases.

• Ewing’s Sarcoma: This is rare condition of bone-marrow disease. This disease begins in the soft tissues surrounding the bones or directly in the bones of children and young adults. Mostly arm and leg bones are affected with this disease.
• Chondrosarcoma: This disease can occur in shoulders, pelvis and thigh areas of older adults. This is form of subchondral tissue, which is the tough connective tissue between the bones.
• Osteosarcoma: This disease mostly appears in children but also can appear in older adults. It is cancer of long bones in the body (arms and legs). But also this disease can appear in hips and shoulders.
• Multiple Myeloma: This type of bone-marrow disease happen the most. It caused when bone marrow cells grow and cause tumor and this disease mostly is seen in young adults. [5]

References:

[1] Pinkel D. Bone marrow transplantation in children. The Journal of Pediatrics. 1993;122(3):331-41.

[2] Yu QH, Wang SY, Wu Z. Advances in genetic studies of inherited bone marrow failure syndromes and their associated malignancies. Translational Pediatrics. 2014;3(4):305–9. doi:10.3978/j.issn.2224-4336.2014.07.06

[3] Green DE, Rubin CT. Consequences of irradiation on bone and marrow phenotypes, and its relation to disruption of hematopoietic precursors. Bone. 2014;0:87–94. doi:10.1016/j.bone.2014.02.018

[4] Wang Y, Probin V, Zhou D. Cancer therapy-induced residual bone marrow injury-Mechanisms of induction and implication for therapy. Current Cancer Therapy Reviews. 2006;2(3):271–9.

[5] Fairfield H, Falank C, Avery L, Reagan MR. Multiple myeloma in the marrow: pathogenesis and treatments. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 2016;1364(1):32–51. doi:10.1111/nyas.13038