title: New clinical grading system for chronic GVHD predicts duration of systemic immunosuppressive treatment and GVHD-specific and overall survival.
abstract: We investigated outcomes according to a new clinical grading system for chronic graft-versus-host disease (chronic GVHD) in 38 patients who developed chronic GVHD after an allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. We categorized the patients into three grade groups, namely, grade I, grade II and grade III, according to the presence of three risk factors: extensive skin involvement, thrombocytopenia (TP) and progressive type of onset. Sixteen patients were classified into grade 1, 19 into grade II and three into grade III. The probability of withdrawal of systemic immunosuppression (IST) at 1, 2 and 3 years was 61, 76 and 87%, respectively. Patients with grades 2 or 3 chronic GVHD had prolonged duration of systemic IST compared to grade 1 (P=0.043). The probability of GVHD-specific survival (GSS) at 5 years was 52%. Twenty-two of 38 patients with chronic GVHD were still alive and the estimated 3-year overall survival (OS) rate was 60%, whereas that for the group with chronic GVHD grade I and grade II+III was 64 and 48% (P<0.05). Multivariate analysis showed that prior occurrence of acute GVHD, chronic GVHD grade, serum bilirubin over 1.5 mg/dl, date of diagnosis of chronic GVHD (<day 150 versus >day 150) and transplantation-risk factor were independent prognostic factors for GSS and OS.
authors.affiliation: Division of Hematology and Oncology, Department of Medicine, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
authors.forename: S T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: C W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Jung
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Kwon
authors.forename: S Y
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Oh
authors.forename: B-B
authors.initials: BB
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: H R
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: H J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: W S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Ahn
authors.forename: W K
authors.initials: WK
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Park
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002908:Chronic Disease; D005260:Female; D006086:Graft vs Host Disease / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology*; D018380:Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation; D006801:Humans; D007166:Immunosuppressive Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011379:Prognosis; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012871:Skin Diseases / Q000209:etiology; D016019:Survival Analysis; D013921:Thrombocytopenia / Q000209:etiology
chemical_list: D007166:Immunosuppressive Agents