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Originally Posted by Bixa525
My sister has CLL and I am to be her peripheral blood harvest and I am to get three injections of Neupogen. Everything I have been reading is telling me that there can be some serious long term effects of this drug and one of them is different forms of Leukemia. Anyone have any current information on this drug and it's side effects?
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According to the National Marrow Donor Program, there have been no reports of long-term complications from the use of Neupogen to move stem cells from your marrow to your circulating blood for stem call harvesting, no doubt because the use is very temporary. A common side effect when you're taking Neupogen to be a stem cell donor is bone pain, which can be controlled with over-the-counter pain relief medicine.
For stem cell donors, a risk of more concern may be that some donors need a temporary central venous line because they don't have suitable arm veins. It's a common procedure but it's minor surgery, which always has a small percentage of risk. But 82 out of 100 women and 97 out of 100 men have suitable veins and don't need a central line.
The overall risk of being a stem cell donor is not zero, so that's to be weighed against the benefit to your sister. In the last decade the method of transplant donation has shifted in most cases from bone marrow donation (which is always a surgical procedure) to stem cell donation. It's safer for the donor and produces faster patient recovery.