Myeloproliferative neoplasms
Post-essential thrombocythemia myelofibrosis
Also called: post-ET MF · PET-MF · post-ET myelofibrosis · secondary myelofibrosis after ET · myelofibrosis · essential thrombocythemia · ET · myeloproliferative neoplasm
Classified by the World Health Organization as Post-essential thrombocythaemia myelofibrosis.
What a donor has to do with this
For some people with this condition, a transplant using blood stem cells from an unrelated donor is part of the treatment guidelines. When a transplant is the right route and no one in the family matches, that donor comes from a registry. Not everyone with this condition has a transplant, and many never need 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.
This page is not written out in full yet
We have not written this condition out in full yet. What is on this page — how a donor fits in, who it affects, and the sources behind that — is researched and linked, but the plain-English explanation of the condition itself is still to come.
What the evidence says
- Who it affects
- Typically diagnosed in the mid-60s without marked sex predominance: median age 66.2 and 44.9% male. Source population/region/year: 69 post-ET MF patients in a predominantly Italian multicentre ruxolitinib-treated cohort with one German centre; study published 2018.
- Treatments other than a transplant
- JAK inhibitors such as ruxolitinib, anemia- and symptom-directed care, splenic management and clinical trials can reduce disease burden or bridge to HCT; only allogeneic HCT is established as curative
- If a transplant is used, the cells come from
- Allogeneic peripheral-blood or bone-marrow grafts from matched related or unrelated donors; cord-blood use carries high graft-failure risk; dominant graft source was not reported separately for post-ET myelofibrosis
- 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
This is fibrotic progression of antecedent essential thrombocythaemia, not primary myelofibrosis; registry coding may retain the antecedent primary. Transplant studies commonly pool post-ET and post-PV disease, so no subtype-specific unrelated-donor share was inferred.
“Primary or post-ET/PV myelofibrosis can only be cured by allo-HCT”
It describes what teams consider in general. It cannot say what applies to any one person. Read the source.
Registries need people
Joining a registry is a cheek swab and a short health form. You are not matched to a condition — you are matched to a person, and it could be someone with any of the conditions in this library. You are contacted only if you turn out to be a possible match for someone, and you can ask questions and decline before anything else happens.
Related conditions
Others in myeloproliferative neoplasms. They are genuinely different diseases with different treatments — the group name is not a diagnosis.
Where this came from
- WHO Classification of Haematolymphoid Tumours, 5th edition — final table of contents — WHO/IARC, final print volume 2024; online classification introduced 2022
- Essential thrombocythaemia — NCI SEER, WHO fifth-edition source 2024; accessed 2026
- Myeloproliferative Neoplasms — Springer / EBMT Handbook, 2024-04-11
- Differences in presenting features, outcome and prognostic models in primary and post-PV/post-ET myelofibrosis treated with ruxolitinib — Seminars in Hematology, 2018
- Comparison of DIPSS and MYSEC-PM for prediction of outcome after allogeneic transplantation — Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation / EBMT, 2019