Risk factors for acute graft-versus-host disease in 291 consecutive HLA-identical bone marrow transplant recipients.
We analysed 35 risk factors for acute GVHD in 291 consecutive recipients of HLA-identical sibling marrow transplants from 1975 to 1993. Of these, 16% developed moderate-to-severe acute GVHD following transplantation. In multivariate analysis, GVHD prophylaxis with monotherapy (MTX or CsA) (P = 0.015) seropositivity for several herpes viruses in the donor (P = 0.015) and seropositivity for CMV in the recipient (P = 0.037) before the transplants as well as early engraftment (P = 0.016), were the principal risk factors for GVHD. A high serum TNF-alpha level during conditioning therapy was also a significant risk factor in 75 recipients (P = 0.005). The risk of grades II-IV acute GVHD increased with the number of risk factors. Thus the cumulative incidence of acute GVHD was 1%, if no risk factor was present, 4% with one, 9% with two, 21% with three and 44% in patients with four risk factors. Factors reported to correlate with acute GVHD, such as age, diagnosis, female donor to male recipient, relative response and donor-responding capacity in MLC, MNS blood group antigen, splenectomy and bone marrow cell dose were not associated with acute GVHD in this study. Five-year survival was 24% in patients with grades II-IV GVHD vs 62% in patients with grades 0-I GVHD (P = 0.0001).
Hägglund
H
H
Department of Clinical Immunology and Transplantation Surgery, Huddinge Hospital, Sweden.
Boström
L
L
Remberger
M
M
Ljungman
P
P
Nilsson
B
B
Ringdén
O
O
D000208:Acute Disease; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation / Q000009:adverse effects*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006086:Graft vs Host Disease / Q000209:etiology* / Q000276:immunology; D006680:HLA Antigens / Q000276:immunology; D006650:Histocompatibility Testing; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012307:Risk Factors; D012737:Sex Factors
D006680:HLA Antigens