Jada Bascom Foundation
All conditions

Inherited metabolic disorders

Fucosidosis

Also called: alpha-fucosidase deficiency · alpha-L-fucosidase deficiency · FUCA1 deficiency

What a donor has to do with this

A transplant is not a standard part of treating this condition. It is used rarely, in particular situations, and most people diagnosed with it will not have one.

This is our reading of published transplant guidelines for this condition, not a measurement of how many people need a donor. Where a source actually counted donors, the figure and the people it counted are shown further down. Where none did, we say so rather than estimate.

What the evidence says

Who it affects
Typical onset/diagnosis: manifestations begin in infancy or childhood in either sex. Evidence: U.S. NIH GARD synthesis (updated 2026); no markedly enriched population was identified.
Treatments other than a transplant
Supportive neurologic, respiratory, nutritional, and rehabilitative care — standard noncurative management — multiple regions — No approved disease-modifying product.
If a transplant is used, the cells come from
bone marrow: used in the opened unrelated-donor case report; mobilized peripheral blood stem cells: not reported in the opened disease-specific evidence; umbilical cord blood: not reported in the opened disease-specific evidence; dominance: bone marrow was the only graft source reported in the opened case evidence
How often the donor was unrelated
Not reported. No source we could read states this for this condition, so we do not give a number. An estimate here would be a guess dressed as evidence.

Where this gets complicated

Evidence consists of isolated cases and tiny series, not a reproducible modern standard-of-care cohort.; Historical type 1/type 2 labels are now often treated as a severity spectrum and should not be used as rigid transplant strata.

Written for transplant clinicians, not for patients. We quote it so you can see what the guidance actually says:
Four year follow-up of a case of fucosidosis treated with unrelated donor bone marrow transplantation

It describes what teams consider in general. It cannot say what applies to any one person. Read the source.

We are not asking you to register on this page

An unrelated donor is not a usual part of treating this condition, so it would be dishonest to use this page to ask you to register. Other conditions in the library are a different story.

Related conditions

Others in inherited metabolic disorders. They are genuinely different diseases with different treatments — the group name is not a diagnosis.

Where this came from

Fucosidosis — what it is and how it is treated | Jada Bascom Foundation