title: Acute graft-versus-host disease in recipients of bone-marrow transplants from identical twin donors.
abstract: Three patients with acute leukaemia received bone-marrow from identical twin donors after pre-transplant preparation with cyclophosphamide, cytosine arabinoside, and total body irradiation. Later clinical and microscopic changes in all three patients suggested cutaneous acute graft-versus host disease. In two of the recipients thrombolytic thrombocytopenia developed during the seventh week after transplantation, and platelet half-life was reduced to 9 h in one recipient (normal 3--4 days). It is suggested that acute graft-versus-host disease in bone-marrow recipients sometimes may result from an imbalance between autoreactive lymphocytes and lymphocytes which suppress their effect and not always from genetically determined histocompatibility differences between donor and recipient.
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D000328:Adult; D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006087:Graft vs Host Reaction; D006801:Humans; D007165:Immunosuppression Therapy / Q000009:adverse effects; D007938:Leukemia / Q000628:therapy; D008297:Male; D011247:Pregnancy; D012867:Skin / Q000276:immunology; D013921:Thrombocytopenia / Q000209:etiology; D014019:Tissue Donors; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous; D014430:Twins, Monozygotic