There are many inherited conditions (also known as genetic disorders) that can affect your blood and bone marrow.

People inherit these conditions through the genes they receive from their parents. They are often very rare and can sometimes be identified from a parent or newborn’s blood sample. However, some conditions remain undetected at birth and do not develop until a little later in life. They include mucopolysaccharide and related diseases (MPS), Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (Anthony Nolan had this) and chronic granulomatous disease.

There are two main groups of inherited conditions: 

There are many different types of PID, with different symptoms, but they all share one similarity – they cause problems with the development of the immune system. Your immune system protects you from infection, so if you have a PID, you are more prone to infections.

Treatment for PIDs aims to control your symptoms and minimise the effect they have on your quality of life. A stem cell transplant may be considered as a curative treatment if your symptoms become unmanageable.

This is a very rare group of inherited diseases that cause problems with your metabolism (the chemical reactions that occur in the cells of your body, which allow your body to break down nutrients and create energy). If you have an IEM, your metabolism doesn’t work as well as it could, which can cause serious health problems.

A stem cell transplant will probably be offered as an alternative treatment if other options are unsuccessful. Many inherited conditions are detected at birth, which means stem cell transplants may have to be given to small children.

If you are a parent who’s supporting a child through a transplant, please read our page for parents for more advice.

The stem cell transplant will likely be an allograft transplant – where new stem cells are donated from an unrelated donor. A small number of conditions can be treated with an autologous transplant – when doctors use a patient’s own stem cells.