Successful treatment of chronic graft-versus-host disease with extracorporeal photopheresis.
A 43-year-old woman who had undergone allogeneic bone marrow transplant for chronic myeloid leukemia developed chronic GVHD. Despite cyclosporine A and low-dose glucocorticoids and later concomittent PUVA-therapy, chronic GVHD with severe sclerodermatous manifestations including joint contracture and liver damage progressed. The Karnofsky performance score dropped to under 50%. Extracorporeal photopheresis (ECP) instead of PUVA-therapy was started. To our knowledge, we here report the first case of successful treatment of extensive chronic GVHD with ECP.
Owsianowski
M
M
Department of Dermatology, University Medical Center Benjamin Franklin, Berlin, Germany.
Gollnick
H
H
Siegert
W
W
Schwerdtfeger
R
R
Orfanos
C E
CE
D000328:Adult; D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation / Q000009:adverse effects*; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003286:Contracture / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000209:etiology; D005260:Female; D006086:Graft vs Host Disease / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000209:etiology; D006801:Humans; D015464:Leukemia, Myelogenous, Chronic, BCR-ABL Positive / Q000628:therapy; D017893:Photopheresis / Q000379:methods*; D012595:Scleroderma, Systemic / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000209:etiology; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous