Blood Transfusion Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Blood Transfusion, including details on blood donation, blood types, leukemia.

Severe intestinal graft versus host disease after donor lymphocyte infusion; response to extracorporeal photochemotherapy.

Vural F, Donmez A, Doganavşargil B, Cagýrgan S, Alper H, Tombuloglu M

Medical Faculty, Department of Hematology, Ege University, 35100 Bornova, Izmir, Turkey. fivural@yahoo.com

We present a patient with acute myelogenous leukemia who developed severe acute intestinal graft versus host disease (GVHD) after donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI) following non-myeloablative allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (allo-PBCT). One month after DLI, patient developed severe abdominal cramps, watery diarrhea without any signs or symptoms of the skin and liver GVHD. Treatment with steroid, cyclosporine A, tacrolimus and mycophenolat mofetil were not effective in controlling intestinal symptoms. Extracorporeal photochemotherapy (ECP), a recently used procedure in the treatment of GVHD was employed periodically and the symptoms subsided gradually. Acute GVHD after DLI may occur severely and atypically, but being limited to the intestine has rarely been reported.

Published 19 September 2005 in Transfus Apher Sci, 33(2): 129-33.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Blood Transfusion Research Today. All Rights Reserved.