High Marrow Cellularity? MDS/MPD

[LynnI]

Can anyone enlighten me on what this means? Apparently my cellularity has been 95% from the first BMB in 2008. From what I have been able to gather, it should be around 50% considering I am almost 48 yrs old and if my marrow was normal. Correct?

What does it mean when it is 95%? Is that score bad? Very bad? Or is it good?

I go back to the doc's next month but I am impatient for answers

Thanks in advance,
Lynn

RCMD 05/2008, Grade 3 Fibrosis, Treatment VPA

[Birgitta-A]

Hi Lynn,
As far as I understand the researchers don’t really know if it is better to have hyperceullular than to have hypocellular bone marrow . Here is a report from MD Anderson Cancer Center 2009:

“In most cases, bone marrow is hyperceullular but in 10 to 20% of cases, bone marrow can be hypocellular (defined as < 30% cellularity in patients < 70 years, or < 20% cellularity in patients 70 years or older)... Currently, there are no good prognostic models for patients with hypocellular MDS...

We analyzed the associations between disease characteristics and survival in 253 cases of hypocellular MDS presented to MDACC between 1993 and 2007… We also compared the presenting characteristic and survival between these patients and a group of patients with hyper/normocelluar MDS (n=1725) during the same time period…

Patients with hypocellular MDS usually presented with more significant thrombocytopenia (p< 0.019), neutropenia (p< 0.001), low β-2 microglobulin (p< 0.001), more transfusion dependency (p< 0.001), and more intermediate-2/high risk disease (57% vs. 42%, p= 0.02) compared to their hyper/normocelluar counterparts...

There was no difference in overall survival between the hypocellular and the hyper/normocellular groups (p= 0.312)…”

http://ash.confex.com/ash/2009/webpr...aper21083.html

Kind regards
Birgitta-A
Hypocellular bone marrow with severe fibrosis and pancytopenia (low RBC, WBC and platelets). Asymptomatic with supportive therapy.

[Lbrown]

I have a stupid question - sorry to interupt this thread - but what does "cellularity" mean? I keep seeing people refer to it but I'm not exactly sure what it means.

Thanks.

[Neil Cuadra]

Originally Posted by Lbrown

what does "cellularity" mean?

Bone marrow contains a mixture of blood-forming (hematopoietic) cells and fat. Cellularity is the percentage of blood-forming cells.

Hypercellular marrow has high cellularity. Hypocellular marrow has low cellularity.

A rule of thumb is that cellularity is about 100 minus age: 100% at birth, 80% at age 20, 60% at age 40, 40% at age 60, and so on. When it's much different than this expected value it can be a sign of disease or the result of treatment that affects bone marrow function.