Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS)

The exact number of people who have MDS is unknown, but about 10,300 new cases were reported in the U.S. in 2003. This number is the result of data collected by the Surveillance, Epidemiology Epidemiology: The study of patterns and causes of disease in groups of people. Epidemiology researchers study how many people have a disease, how many new cases are diagnosed each year, where patients are located, and environmental or other factors that influence disease. , and End Results (SEER) Program of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). This program only started collecting data in 2001. The number of people may be higher than reported because some doctors are still don’t know that they need to report MDS cases to a national registry. Some doctors believe there are as many as 12,000 to 15,000 new MDS cases a year.

People diagnosed with MDS are:

• More often men than women
• Most often age 60 or older; 72 is the average age of diagnosis
• Most often white (Caucasian)

Native Americans, African-Americans, Inuits, Asians, and Pacific Islanders are less likely to get MDS.

MDS (myelodysplastic syndromes) is a group of disorders in which your blood-forming stem cells stem cells: Cells in the body that develop into other cells. There are two main sources of stem cells. Embryonic stem cells come from human embryos and are used in medical research. Adult stem cells in the body repair and maintain the organ or tissue in which they are found. Blood-forming (hemapoietic) stem… are defective and fail to make healthy, mature blood cells. Doctors consider MDS to be a slow growing form of blood and bone marrow bone marrow: The soft, spongy tissue inside most bones. Blood cells are formed in the bone marrow. cancer. With MDS, patients have low blood counts for at least one blood cell type and blood cells look abnormal under a microscope. Doctors must do a bone marrow biopsy bone marrow biopsy: A medical procedure to remove a small piece of solid bone marrow using a needle that goes into the marrow of the hip bone. The solid bone marrow is examined for cell abnormalities, the number of different cells and checked for scarring of the bone marrow. to be certain of the diagnosis. Symptoms and the course of MDS vary for each patient depending on which blood cells are affected.