1. ¹Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation, University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
2. ²Department of Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplantation, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel

Correspondence: Dr N Kröger, Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation, University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistrasse 52, D-20246 Hamburg, Germany. E-mail: nkroeger@uke.uni-hamburg.de

Received 12 August 2005; Accepted 31 October 2005; Published online 16 January 2006.

Abstract

We investigated a dose-reduced conditioning regimen consisting of treosulfan and fludarabine followed by allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT) in 26 patients with secondary AML or MDS. Twenty patients were transplanted from matched or mismatched unrelated donors and six from HLA-identical sibling donors. The median age of the patients was 60 years (range, 44–70). None of the patients was eligible for a standard myeloablative preparative regimen. No graft-failure was observed, and leukocyte and platelet engraftment were observed after a median of 16 and 17 days, respectively. Acute graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) grade II–IV was seen in 23% and severe grade III GvHD in 12% of the patients. No patients experienced grade IV acute GvHD. Chronic GvHD was noted in 36% of the patients, which was extensive disease in 18%. The 2-year cumulative incidence of relapse was 21%. The relapse rate was higher in patients beyond CR1 or with intermediate two or high risk MDS (P=0.02). The treatment-related mortality at day 100 was 28%. The 2-year estimated overall and disease-free survival was 36–34%, respectively. No difference in survival was seen between unrelated and related SCT.