Preoperative exercise facilitates abundant bone marrow collection in patients with type 2 diabetes for mononuclear cell therapy

Background aimsTraditional bone marrow (BM) collection is inadequate for separation of abundant mononuclear cells (MNCs). We aimed to investigate the effects of preoperative exercise on BM collection in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).MethodsSixty patients with T2DM were randomly assigned to either a control group or an exercise group (n = 30 each). The patients in the exercise group exercised before the collection. All patients underwent routine surgical care. The collected BM volume, operation duration, collecting speed, puncture times and pain scores were recorded. BM samples were tested before and after MNCs separation for CD34+ flow cytometry and whole blood cell count.ResultsThe collected BM volumes were significantly larger and collection speed was faster in the exercise group (379.77 ± 4.93 mL and 1.40 ± 0.14 mL/s) than those in the control group (356.67 ± 15.36 mL and 0.89 ± 0.16 mL/s, P = 0.00 for both). Puncture times were significantly less and pain scores were lower in the exercise group (2.07 ± 0.25 and 2.67 ± 1.56) than those in the control group (2.50 ± 0.63 and 3.43 ± 1.76, P = 0.00 and 0.02, respectively). CD34+ cells and whole blood cell count variables were comparable in the 2 groups.ConclusionsPreoperative exercise facilitates BM collection by increasing collected volume, improving collecting speed, relieving patients' pains and ensuring MNC quality.