title: Reduced-intensity conditioning lowers treatment-related mortality of allogeneic stem cell transplantation for chronic lymphocytic leukemia: a population-matched analysis.
abstract: To elucidate whether reduced-intensity conditioning (RIC) decreases treatment-related mortality (TRM) after allogeneic stem cell transplantation (allo-SCT) for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), we retrospectively compared 73 RIC cases from a recent EBMT survey with 82 patients from the EBMT database who had undergone standard myeloablative conditioning (MC) for CLL during the same time period. The two populations were matched by adjusting the primary risk factor, the conditioning regimen, in a series of Cox models for age, sex, donor type, remission status at transplant and analyzed for its effect on TRM, relapse incidence, event-free (EFS) and overall survival (OS). After adjustment, a significant reduction of TRM became evident for the RIC population (hazard ratio (HR) 0.4 (95% confidence interval 0.18-0.9); P=0.03). On the other hand, RIC was associated with an increased relapse incidence (HR 2.65 (0.98-7.12); P=0.054). There was no significant difference between RIC and MC in terms of EFS (HR 0.69 (0.38-1.25); P=0.22) and OS (HR 0.65 (0.33-1.28); P=0.21). We conclude that RIC appears to favorably influence TRM after allo-SCT for CLL. This observation, as well as possible detrimental effects of RIC on relapse risk, should be confirmed by prospective studies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Hematology, Allgemeines Krankenhaus St Georg, Hamburg, Germany. peter_dreger@med.uni-heidelberg.de
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Dreger
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Brand
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Milligan
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Corradini
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Finke
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lambertenghi Deliliers
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Martino
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Russell
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: van Biezen
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Michallet
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Niederwieser
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D018380:Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation / Q000401:mortality*; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D015451:Leukemia, Lymphocytic, Chronic, B-Cell / Q000401:mortality* / Q000628:therapy*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012008:Recurrence; D012042:Registries; D012307:Risk Factors; D019172:Transplantation Conditioning / Q000379:methods* / Q000401:mortality*; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous