Friday, December 23, 2011

Myelodysplastic syndrome versus myeloproliferative disorder

I've seen fuzzy use of these terms and evidently the question came up at Emory morning report, hence a post at The Bottom Line:

Myeloproliferative diseases are characterized by large numbers of abnormal blood cells (red, white or platelets) growing and spreading in bone marrow and blood. On the other hand, myelodysplastic syndrome includes various clonal hemopathies characterized by decreased production of blood cells and are associated with a risk for development of acute leukemia.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The difference between MPD and MDS is whether the cells mature normally or abnormally. In myeloproliferative disorders, cells mature normally, but they have an abnormally high amount of proliferation – hence the name emphasizes they are proliferative. This can lead to very high numbers of cells in the blood. In myelodysplastic syndromes, the cells mature abnormally. A stem cell in the bone marrow, instead of maturing into a normal cell, matures into something else – something just weird, and often not very functional. These ‘weird’ cells are described as dysplastic (hence, myelodysplastic syndromes). These dysplastic cells are often so odd and non-functional that they die. This results in lower numbers in the blood of what cell type they should have become.