Cancer|Information,Research,Treatment,Alternative|GynCancerDoctor.com

Marrow is a substance inside certain larger bones that contains the stem cells from which various blood cells are made. These include red blood cells(oxygen carrying), white blood cells(infection fighting), and platelets(help with coagulation of blood in case of bleeding). The bone marrow itself can become cancerous (leukemias), but its importance in gynecologic cancers is mainly that chemotherapy affects the stem cells. Usually, after each course of chemotherapy, the bone marrow produces new white/red blood cells and platelets to replace the ones that were damaged by chemo. After many chemotherapy treatments, this response gets weakers and weaker. Drugs exist which help the bone marrow produce new cells (Procrit, Neupogen and others), but these can only help while there are an adequate number of stem cells left. Radiation therapy can also irreversibly damage the bone marrow if the radiation beams are near those areas.