title: The median rise of leucocytes predicts the optimal days for leukapheresis in children.
abstract: 22 consecutive patients with a median age of 11 years (range 3-23) underwent 103 leucaphereses after a chemotherapy induced aplasia. They suffered from various solid tumors and hematological malignancies. The stem cell yield of 69 aphereses which were done during the 8 days following the first platelet rise, was median 1.02 x 10(4) myeloid committed stem cells (CFU-GM)/kg/apheresis (range 0.02-13.3), whereas only 0.27 x 10(4) CFU-GM/kg/apheresis (range 0.01-1.11) were obtained in 34 "random" collections (p less than .05). The CFU-GM yield of 69 "well timed" collections depended on the absolute number of circulating leucocytes (p = .002) and mononuclear cells (p less than .001). The median daily increment of leucocytes was a reliable predictor of the stem cell yield (p = .002) and could be used to select the optimal days for leucaphereses during the well timed period. By careful timing alone high stem cell numbers could be collected in various malignancies without using exogenous growth factors.
authors.affiliation: St. Anna Children's Hospital, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Emminger
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Emminger-Schmidmeier
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Höcker
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kundi
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Peters
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gadner
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001804:Blood Transfusion, Autologous; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D018380:Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation; D006801:Humans; D007937:Leukapheresis; D007958:Leukocyte Count; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000097:blood* / Q000628:therapy; D013997:Time Factors