Nutritional risk factors predict severe acute graft-versus-host disease and early mortality in pediatric allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

Background: Malnutrition is a pro-inflammatory state, yet data on nutritional risk factors and development of acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) are extremely limited.

Procedure: We conducted a retrospective cohort analysis of pediatric patients up to age 21 years who underwent allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia from January 2011 to September 2014 to determine whether malnutrition was associated with development of aGVHD and early mortality. We identified body mass index (BMI) percentile and serum albumin levels as potential markers of malnutrition and defined two composite nutritional risk variables as any of the following: albumin < 2.