Unrelated peripheral blood and cord blood hematopoietic stem cell transplants for thalassemia major.

Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is currently the only curative treatment available for thalassemia major. While sibling donors are usually used, unrelated bone marrow transplants have also recently been found to be successful. In this report of two patients, we show that, besides using unrelated bone marrow, peripheral blood stem cell and cord blood transplantations from unrelated donors are viable options. We believe a significant contributory factor in both our cases was the large cell dose used.