Why do men make the best bone marrow donors?

Why do men make the best bone marrow donors?

Paul Travers (Deputy Director of Research) gives expert video advice on: What is bone marrow?; Who needs a bone marrow transplant?; Why do you need more donors and who can become a donor? and more...

There's a couple different reasons for that. One simple reason is the amount of bone marrow you can get from a donor is often related to the size and the weight of the donor and men are generally bigger than women and you can get more bone marrow from a man than you can from a woman. The success of the transplant, to a certain extent, is related to the amount of the donation you can give; the more you can give the more likely it is to be successful. There are some other reasons as well. One important reason is that female cells can respond to male cells in a way which can cause problems. If you had a female donor for a male transplant, male cells won't respond to female cells in the same way; so male donor into a female patient wouldn't have the same problems. So males are more like universal donors; there are fewer problems in male donors. And then finally, you can't donate if you're pregnant and for a period of a year after you've given birth. And so if you're a female volunteer donor, there may be periods when you're not able to donate and so if you happen to be a match during that time, you can't donate and so it's more efficient, in a way, to have male donors because they're always going to be available to donate to any patient in need.