title: Chronic GVHD is associated with lower relapse risk irrespective of stem cell source among patients receiving transplantation from unrelated donors.
abstract: Chronic GVHD (cGVHD) has been associated with reduced risk of relapse after allo-SCT for onco-hematological disease due to a graft-vs-malignancy effect. Here we retrospectively analyzed a series of 802 adult patients transplanted from unrelated donors and found that cGVHD was associated with significantly lower relapse and that the limited form was associated with a survival advantage: hazard ratio for OS=0.63 (0.46-0.87); P=0.004; this was due to combination of relapse reduction and similar non-relapse mortality with respect to patients without cGVHD. Importantly, the graft-vs-malignancy effect observed here did not differ when PBSC or BM were used as stem cell source, thus suggesting that the protective effect of limited cGVHD is similar after PBSC- or BM-based transplantation. These findings could have practical implications and suggest no qualitative difference between cGVHD occurring after transplantation performed with different stem cell sources.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Sciences (DISSAL), Section of Biostatistic, University of Genoa, Genova, Italy. alsign1@inwind.it
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Signori
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Crocchiolo
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Oneto
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Sacchi
authors.forename: M P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Sormani
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Fagioli
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rambaldi
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ciceri
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bacigalupo
mesh_terms: D002908:Chronic Disease; D006086:Graft vs Host Disease / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000401:mortality; D006801:Humans; D019520:Living Donors / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D036102:Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Transplantation / Q000379:methods / Q000401:mortality / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012008:Recurrence; D012307:Risk Factors; D015996:Survival Rate; D014019:Tissue Donors / Q000706:statistics & numerical data