Drive Seeks Bone Marrow Match for Boy, 10

A bone marrow-typing drive will be held Sunday to try to find a donor for a 10-year-old Rancho Penasquitos boy with a fatal blood disorder.

Kyle Varonfakis was diagnosed at the age of 4 with a blood disorder that causes bone marrow failure, said Lynn Stedd, spokeswoman for the San Diego Blood Bank, which is holding the drive.

For the past year, Kyle, a student at Sunset Hill Elementary School, has been receiving monthly blood transfusions because his bone marrow is not producing enough oxygen-carrying, red blood cells, Stedd said. No one in Kyle’s family is a matching donor.

“He’s doing well right now, but eventually his condition will change,” she said. “We’re hoping to find a donor while he is still in this stage.”

“He feels OK, but I think he does have a lower energy level,” said Kyle’s mother, Debbie Poggioli.

Through bake sales, carnivals and other fund-raisers, the family has collected nearly $12,000 to pay for the typing drive, Poggioli said. The testing of potential donors is care not covered by the family’s medical insurance, she said.

Up to 400 people can be tested at the screening, which will be held from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday at Clairemont Emmanuel Baptist Church, 2610 Galveston St., in Clairemont, she said. An earlier drive, which tested 630 people, produced no matches for Kyle but did produce several potential donors for other patients, she said. The chances of a donor matching Kyle’s blood marrow are 1 in 20,000.

Blood samples will be taken from potential donors, who must be from 18 to 55 years old and in good health with no history of asthma, cancer or heart or circulatory disease, Stedd said.

The results of the typing will be entered into the National Marrow Donor Program, which maintains a computerized registry for potential donors, she said. The program will perform a computer check to see if any of the marrow types match Kyle’s or any bone marrow patient across the country.

If additional testing confirms the match, the donor will be admitted to either Children’s Hospital or UC San Diego Medical Center for an overnight stay at no cost, Stedd said. Under anesthesia, the bone marrow is removed from the donor’s pelvic bone with a long needle and then injected into a vein in the recipient. If the procedure is successful, the marrow finds its way inside the patient’s bone and begins producing red blood cells, she said.