title: Clinical utility of chimerism status assessed by lineage-specific short tandem repeat analysis: experience from four cases of allogeneic stem cell transplantation.
abstract: Chimerism testing permits early prediction and documentation of successful engraftment, and also facilitates detection of impending graft rejection. In this study, we serially monitored chimerism status by short tandem repeat-based PCR in nucleated cells (NC), T cells and natural killer (NK) cells after myeloablative allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT). Four patients with myeloid malignancies showed discrepant chimerism results among those three fractions. Three patients had mixed chimerism (MC) of donor/host T cells at a time point around the onset of chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). In two patients with disease relapse, MC of NK cells preceded a morphological relapse or NK cells showed a higher percentage of patient cells compared to NC. Therefore, our study shows that chimerism analysis in lineage-specific cells might be useful in predicting clinical outcome after allogeneic SCT in certain patients.
authors.affiliation: Department of Laboratory Medicine, Dong-A University College of Medicine, Busan, Korea.
authors.forename: Ri-Young
authors.initials: RY
authors.lastname: Goh
authors.forename: Sung-Suk
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.forename: Yoo-Jeong
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Kyeong
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Heo
authors.forename: Sung-Yong
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Oh
authors.forename: Sung-Hyun
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Hyeok-Chan
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Kwon
authors.forename: Hyo-Jin
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Jin-Yeong
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Han
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D046528:Chimerism; D006086:Graft vs Host Disease / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology; D006801:Humans; D007694:Killer Cells, Natural / Q000166:cytology / Q000276:immunology; D008297:Male; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats / Q000235:genetics*; D008875:Middle Aged; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D033581:Stem Cell Transplantation; D013601:T-Lymphocytes / Q000166:cytology / Q000276:immunology; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous