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Fertility preservation in an adolescent boy: inducing puberty and spermatogenesis prior to elective, non-urgent bone marrow transplantation

Bone Marrow Transplantation volume 52, pages 792–793 (2017)Cite this article

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Bone marrow transplantation (BMT) has become an increasingly common option for management of oncologic and other conditions in recent years. BMT involves the use of pre-conditioning regimens that compromise fertility. Many conditioning regimens have devastating effects on the spermatogonial stem cell pool, leading to lack of functional gametes and consequent sterility. BMT is usually undertaken as an urgent or semi-urgent procedure, either as a primary modality of cancer care for high-risk leukaemias, after failed chemotherapy or relapse of leukaemia, or less commonly in the setting of immune deficiency syndromes or bone marrow failures such as aplastic anaemia.1

Occasionally for conditions such as thalassemia major, or aplastic anaemia, it is possible to plan BMT within a longer time frame, wherein blood transfusions continue but marrow failure predicates a need for further management.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Endocrinology, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Royal Children’s Hospital, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    C Ho & M Zacharin

  2. Khoo Teck Puat-National University Children’s Medical Institute, National University Health System, Singapore, Singapore,

    C Ho

  3. Department of Paediatrics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore,

    C Ho

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  1. C Ho
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  2. M Zacharin
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Correspondence to C Ho.

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Ho, C., Zacharin, M. Fertility preservation in an adolescent boy: inducing puberty and spermatogenesis prior to elective, non-urgent bone marrow transplantation. Bone Marrow Transplant 52, 792–793 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/bmt.2017.6

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