A Fefer

Sixty-one evaluable patients, 19 with advanced aplastic anemia and 42 with end stage hematological malignancies, were conditioned for marrow grafting with total body irradiation or cyclophosphamide, or a combination of both. Marrow graft donors were siblings matched at the HL-A region and nonreactive in mixed leukocyte culture. All patients received methotrexate postgrafting to modify anticipated graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Forty-three of the 61 patients developed clinically recognizable GVHD. In seven GVHD was limited to the skin. In the remaining patients, skin involvement was more severe and was followed by gastrointestinal involvement manifested by anorexia, nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and malabsorption and/or liver involvement manifested by hepatomegaly, rises in serum glutamic oxaloacetic acid transaminase, and bilirubin. The severity of GVHD showed no correlation with the underlying disease, the conditioning regimen, or the day of onset after grafting. Fourteen of 25 patients without GVHD or with only skin involvement are alive. By contrast, only 5 of 36 with severe GVHD are alive. Twenty-six of the 36 patients with severe GVHD succumbed to infection, whereas only 4 of 25 without GVHD or with only skin involvement did so. The results show that despite histocompatibility matching and methotrexate therapy, GVHD remains a serious and often fatal complication of marrow transplantation.

THE modern era of bone-marrow transplantation was ushered in by the experiments of Jacobsen, Lorenz and their colleagues, who showed that mice could be protected against otherwise lethal irradiation by shielding of the spleen1 or by intravenous infusion of marrow.2 At first it was thought that this protective effect was due to a humoral factor.3 By 1956, however, several laboratories, using a variety of blood genetic markers, demonstrated that the protective effect against lethal irradiation was due to the colonization of the recipient marrow by donor cells.4 5 6 7An article on clinical marrow transplantation that appeared in . . .

Abstract One hundred patients, 54 with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and 46 with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), considered to be in the end stages of their disease, after combination chemotherapy were treated by marrow transplantation. All patients were given a marrow graft from an HLA-identical sibling after receiving 1000-rad total body irradiation (TBI). One group of 43 patients was given cyclophosphamide (CY), 60 mg/kg on each of 2 days, 5 and 4 days before TBI. In a second group of 31 patients, additional chemotherapy was given before CY and TBI. In a third group of 19 patients, BCNU was given before CY and TBI. A fourth group of 7 patients received other chemotherapy regimens before TBI. Six patients died 3–17 days after marrow infusion without evidence of engraftment. Ninety-four patients were engrafted and only one patient rejected the graft. Thirteen patients are alive with a marrow graft, on no maintenance antileukemic therapy, and without recurrent leukemia 1–4 1/2 yr after transplantation. Three have chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Four patients are alive 1 1/2 - 3 1/2 yr after grafting but have had a relapse of their leukemia. Of 93 evaluable patients, 19 did not develop GVHD and 24 developed very mild GVHD. Fifty patients developed moderate to severe GVHD, and 40 of these were treated with antithymocyte globulin. Interstitial pneumonia occurred in 54 patients and was the primary cause of death in 34. Interstitial pneumonia often occurred in association with GVHD and the most common etiologic agent was cytomegalovirus. A total of 31 patients have had a relapse of leukemia. There was no definite correlation between relapse of leukemia and the presence or absence of GVHD. The relapse rate appeared to be relatively constant over the first 2 yr and was extremely low after that time. Neither survival nor leukemic relapse appeared to be influenced by the type of leukemia nor by the preparative chemotherapy regimen given before TBI. Patients in fair clinical condition at the time of transplantation showed significantly longer survival times than patients in poor condition (p = 0.001). This observation, coupled with the observation that some patients may be cured of their disease, indicates that marrow transplantation should now be undertaken earlier in the management of patients with acute leukemia who have an HLA- matched sibling marrow donor.

To assess the influence of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) on recurrent leukemia and survival after allogeneic marrow transplantation, we studied 1,202 patients with acute nonlymphocytic leukemia (ANL), acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), and chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) given unmodified marrow grafts from HLA-identical siblings. Proportional hazards regression models using acute GVHD and chronic GVHD as time-dependent covariates demonstrated a significant association of GVHD with a decreased relative risk (RR, 0.33 to 0.42) of relapse in patients with ANL, ALL, and CML transplanted in advanced disease. Among patients developing either acute or chronic GVHD, treatment failure (that is, mortality or relapse) was decreased in patients with ALL transplanted in relapse (RR = 0.70, P less than .033) and CML in blast crisis (RR = 0.37, P less than .009). This effect was independent of age, sex, preparative regimen, GVHD prophylaxis, or length of follow-up. Five-year actuarial estimates were derived for the subset of 657 patients who survived in remission 150 days after transplant and were at risk for development of chronic GVHD. Among patients with ANL in first remission or CML in chronic phase, GVHD had an adverse effect on survival and no apparent influence on relapse. Among patients with ANL and ALL transplanted in relapse, the probability of relapse after day 150 was 74% without [corrected] GVHD, 45% with acute and chronic GVHD, 35% with [corrected] only acute GVHD, and 34% with only chronic GVHD (P less than .001). Actuarial survival in these four GVHD groups was 25%, 34%, 59%, and 62%, respectively (P less than .009). Among patients with CML in acceleration or blast crisis, the probability of relapse after day 150 was 65% without GVHD and 36% with acute and/or chronic GVHD (P less than .017). We conclude that acute and chronic GVHD were associated with a durable antileukemic effect and improved survival in patients transplanted in advanced stages of ALL and CML.

One hundred ninety-eight patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia received marrow transplants after intensive chemotherapy and total body irradiation. Multivariate analysis showed disease status at time of transplantation to be the most powerful predictor of survival. The probability of long-term survival for allogeneic graft recipients was 49% for 67 patients in the first chronic phase, 58% for 12 in the second chronic phase, 15% for 46 in the accelerated phase, and 14% for 42 in the blastic phase. The major cause of death was interstitial pneumonia for patients in the chronic phase, and relapse for those in the blastic or accelerated phases. Factors favoring survival were early transplantation, age less than 30 years, and absence of severe graft-versus-host disease. Splenectomy or spleen size did not influence survival. For recipients of syngeneic grafts survival probability was 87% for 16 patients in the chronic phase, 27% for 7 in the accelerated phase, and 12% for 8 in the blastic phase. Of the 198 patients, 71 are alive without Philadelphia chromosomes 1 to 9 years after receiving their graft. All but 4 long-term disease-free survivors have Karnofsky performance scores of 80% or better.