title: Study of chimerism in long-term survivors after bone marrow transplantation for severe acquired aplastic anemia.
abstract: Chimerism studies employing PCR and Southern techniques targeting VNTR loci were performed in 17 severe acquired aplastic anemia patients who were long-term survivors after BMT. They were studied a median of 4 years after BMT (1-12). All patients had normal blood counts. All patients conditioned with radiation-based schemes showed a full donor pattern of hemopoiesis. Conversely, out of five patients who received only cyclophosphamide as conditioning therapy, two of them had a late graft failure (2.4 and 3 years after BMT). One of these relapsing patients had a durable mixed chimerism, which was first detected 1 month after BMT. Our results seem to suggest that durable mixed chimerism can antecede graft failure in some patients conditioned only with cyclophosphamide, and that a more stringent monitoring can be clinically rewarding in this group of patients.
authors.affiliation: Department of Hematology, Hospital Universitario de la Princesa, Spain.
authors.forename: L F
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Casado
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Steegmann
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Picó
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Requena
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ramirez
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Madero
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Vicario
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Alegre
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gómez
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Fernández-Rañada
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000741:Anemia, Aplastic / Q000628:therapy*; D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation; D002648:Child; D002678:Chimera; D005260:Female; D006086:Graft vs Host Disease / Q000209:etiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D012091:Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid; D017741:Survivors; D019172:Transplantation Conditioning