What disqualifies you from donating bone marrow?

Current NMDP guidance does not permit donation with HIV/AIDS, says most heart disease prevents donation, and excludes severe systemic autoimmune disease that affects the whole body. Cancer eligibility depends on the exact diagnosis, treatment, and timing. NMDP temporarily defers donation during pregnancy until you have fully recovered after delivery. If you are breastfeeding and called as a match, NMDP directs you to contact your donor representative to discuss your options.

Eligibility rules vary by registry and country. The official registry serving your country must decide how tattoo or piercing history, diabetes, blood pressure, medication, BMI, smoking, past illness, and age apply under its current guidance.

NMDP currently evaluates tattoos from the past year for signs or symptoms of infection and reviews recent piercings based on whether shared or nonsterile instruments were used. That is a temporary safety review, not a universal tattoo waiting period or a permanent exclusion. The official registry serving your country makes the final decision from its current medical guidance and your health history.

Current registry guidance separates conditions that can prevent donation from concerns that require individual review. The official registry serving your country applies that guidance to your actual health history.

The first bucket exists to protect two people at once — the patient receiving the transplant and you, the donor. The American Cancer Society describes how donor and recipient health are both reviewed before any stem cell transplant proceeds, while the official registry decides whether a particular condition makes donation unsafe.

The second bucket contains concerns that require condition-specific review. The official registry serving your country decides how a tattoo, blood-pressure treatment, antidepressant, or BMI applies under its current guidance; this page cannot clear or exclude you.

The Jada Bascom Foundation's companion page on who can donate explains current NMDP guidance and directs readers outside the United States to the official registry serving their country.

Under current NMDP guidance, carcinoma in situ of the cervix can be acceptable. Current NMDP guidance says other cancers may prevent donation permanently or for a defined period depending on the exact diagnosis, treatment, and timing. Current chemotherapy must therefore be reviewed under the cancer-specific rule rather than a blanket claim on this page.

Current NMDP guidance does not permit donation with HIV/AIDS and excludes severe systemic autoimmune disease that affects the whole body. For hepatitis history and bleeding disorders, the official registry serving your country must decide from its current medical guidance and your individual history.

Current NMDP guidance says most heart disease prevents donation. It temporarily defers donation during pregnancy until you have fully recovered after delivery. If you are breastfeeding and called as a match, NMDP directs you to contact your donor representative to discuss your options. The National Cancer Institute describes donor selection as a clinical process that considers the full medical picture.

These concerns require an official registry decision; none carries a universal answer. Each one below has its own detailed page if you want the specifics.

NMDP currently evaluates tattoos from the past year for signs or symptoms of infection and reviews recent piercings based on whether shared or nonsterile instruments were used. NMDP may allow well-controlled diabetes after careful evaluation and may allow controlled high blood pressure when there is no associated heart disease. It says medication and the underlying condition may affect donation or the collection procedure. Other registries apply their own current medical guidance.

NMDP assesses BMI for donor safety. For smoking, past illness, and routine surgery, the official registry serving your country must decide from its current health-history rules. Age cutoffs also vary: NMDP currently recruits eligible U.S. residents ages 18-35, while other registries set their own ranges. The Cleveland Clinic describes donor screening as a health-history review designed to confirm donation is safe.

If your concern lives in this bucket, the honest answer is that the official registry serving your country needs to review it.

No web page can disqualify you, and neither can a friend, a forum, or your own best guess. Eligibility is a determination the registry makes from your actual health history, against its own current medical guidelines. Those guidelines differ from registry to registry and country to country, which is exactly why hard universal numbers are misleading.

The HRSA C.W. Bill Young Cell Transplantation Program oversees the US donor system, and the registries that operate under it apply detailed, regularly updated criteria. A condition that defers you at one registry may be acceptable at another, and guidance shifts over time as the evidence does. That is a feature, not a loophole — it means the people with the full medical picture are the ones making the call.

This is also why 'joining is not donating' matters here. Your official registry explains its enrollment and health-history process. You are only contacted if you turn out to be a possible match for a specific patient — at which point there is a second, more detailed health screening, and you can still ask questions or decline before anything happens. Nothing is locked in by signing up.