1. ¹Blood and Marrow Transplant Program, Department of Medicine, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
2. ²Blood and Marrow Transplant Program, Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

Correspondence: Dr M Arora, Blood and Marrow Transplant Program, Division of Hematology, Oncology and Transplantation, Department of Medicine, University of Minnesota, Mayo Mail Code 480, 420 Delaware Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. E-mail: arora005@umn.edu

Received 15 May 2008; Revised 25 July 2008; Accepted 29 July 2008; Published online 15 September 2008.

Abstract

The Diagnosis and Staging Working Group of the NIH Consensus Development Project on Criteria for Clinical Trials in chronic GVHD (CGVHD) recently proposed criteria for diagnosis and assessment of overall CGVHD severity. We retrospectively reviewed 54 consecutive patients diagnosed with CGVHD between January 2002 and December 2005 after sibling donor transplant to assess the applicability of the new criteria in prognosticating survival and transplant-related mortality (TRM). A total of 8 patients (15%) were reclassified as late onset/persistent or recurrent acute GVHD (late aGVHD), 15 (28%) had overlap syndrome and 31 (57%) had classic CGVHD. Three-year overall survival was worse in patients with late aGVHD (3-year probability 25% (95% CI 4–56%)) followed by overlap syndrome (3-year probability 87% (95% CI 56–96%)) and CGVHD (3-year probability 75% (95% CI 54–87%)); P=0.001. Among patients with overlap syndrome and CGVHD, a trend towards worse survival was seen in patients with severe disease (3-year probability 57.3% (95% CI 21–82%)) as compared to mild+moderate disease (3-year probability 85.1% (95% CI 68–94)); P=0.1. This analysis, undertaken in a contemporary cohort of related donor recipients, indicates that the consensus guidelines are applicable to this population of CGVHD patients.