Successful preemptive cidofovir treatment for CMV antigenemia after dose-reduced conditioning and allogeneic blood stem cell transplantation.

Background: Cidofovir (CDV) is a nucleotide analogue with proven in vitro effects against cytomegalovirus (CMV) and adenovirus and has been successfully used in the treatment of CMV retinitis in AIDS patients.

Methods: We performed a prospective study to evaluate the efficacy of CDV in 17 patients with hematological malignancies after allogeneic blood stem cell transplantation from related (n=3) and unrelated (n=14) donors. Dose-reduced conditioning (DRC) regimen consisted of busulfan (Bu)/fludarabine (Flu) (n=9) and idarubicin/cytosine arabinoside/Flu (n=1).

Treatment of relapsing leukemia after allogeneic blood stem cell transplantation by using dose-reduced conditioning followed by donor blood stem cells and GM-CSF.

Ten patients with high-risk acute myeloid leukemia (AML), chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) relapsing early (< 1 year, n = 8) or late (> or = 1 year, n = 2) after allogeneic transplantation were treated with cytoreductive chemotherapy followed by unmanipulated peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT) from related (n = 3) and unrelated donors (n = 7). In order to enhance the graft-versus-leukemia effect, patients received no graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) prophylaxis and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) was given at a dose of 60 micrograms/m2 after transplant. Acute GVHD grade I-IV was seen in all patients.

Acute heart failure after allogeneic blood stem cell transplantation due to massive myocardial infiltration by cytotoxic T cells of donor origin.

A 17-year-old male with AML FAB M4 relapsed 4 months after myeloablative conditioning and peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT) from an HLA-identical unrelated donor. A second PBSC harvest was infused 2 days after completion of cytoreductive therapy with mitoxantrone 7 mg/m(2)/day i.v.

Spleen enlargement in healthy donors during G-CSF mobilization of PBPCs.

Background: Recombinant human G-CSF is widely used to mobilize PBPCs in healthy donors for allogeneic transplantation. There have been concerns about donor safety because of splenic ruptures during G-CSF application. To address this problem, changes in splenic size in 91 healthy donors during G-CSF mobilization of allogeneic PBPCs were investigated.