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Extracorporeal photopheresis is a valuable treatment option in steroid-refractory or steroid-dependent acute graft versus host disease—experience with three different approaches

Bone Marrow Transplantation volume 54, pages 150–154 (2019)Cite this article

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Extracorporeal photopheresis (ECP) is increasingly used in the treatment of acute graft versus host disease (aGvHD). It is recognized as an immunomodulatory therapy that decreases inflammation and possibly induces immune tolerance [1]. In our center, we have used ECP for aGvHD since the year 2014. Initially ECP was used as salvage therapy if the conventional second-line therapy with infliximab was insufficient. Due to good results and increased availability, we increasingly used ECP as second-line therapy either in combination with infliximab or alone. We hypothesized that addition of ECP would improve response rates and survival for the patients. In this study, we present our treatment outcomes for three approaches to the use of ECP for aGvHD. We assess response at pre-determined time points to facilitate comparison with existing and future studies on second-or-further-line therapies for aGvHD as recently proposed [2, 3].

A single investigator (MN) retrospectively collected data from patient records from 38 patients treated with ECP between January 2014 and August 2017 at the Department of Hematology at Rigshospitalet, Denmark. All patients gave informed consent for the use of data and the study was conducted in accordance with guidelines from the regional Ethics Committee and the Danish Data Protection Agency.

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Acknowledgements

Supported by unrestricted grants from the Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF15OC0014158), the Danish Cancer Society and Danish National Research Foundation grant 126.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Haematology, Rigshospitalet, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Marietta Nygaard, Niels Smedegaard Andersen, Ida Marianne Schjødt, Søren Lykke Petersen, Lone Smidstrup Friis, Brian Thomas Kornblit & Henrik Sengeløv

  2. Department of Dermatology, Bispebjerg Hospital, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Tonny Karlsmark

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  1. Marietta Nygaard
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Correspondence to Marietta Nygaard.

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Conflict of interest

M.N. has received travel grant for conference participation and speakers fee from Therakos (a part of Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals). The remaining authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Nygaard, M., Karlsmark, T., Andersen, N.S. et al. Extracorporeal photopheresis is a valuable treatment option in steroid-refractory or steroid-dependent acute graft versus host disease—experience with three different approaches. Bone Marrow Transplant 54, 150–154 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41409-018-0262-x

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