Graft-Versus-Host Disease

Excerpt

Graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) is a systemic disorder that occurs when the graft's immune cells recognize the host as foreign and attack the recipient’s body cells. “Graft” refers to transplanted, or donated tissue, and “host” refers to the tissues of the recipient. It is a common complication after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HCT) .

GVHD has been classically classified based on the timing of presentation into acute and chronic using a cutoff of 100 days post-transplant. This has been further subclassified based on clinical manifestations accepted by the NIH into:

1. Acute classic GVHD: Presents within 100 days of transplantation with classical clinical features of acute GVHD.

2. Persistent, recurrent, or late-onset acute GVHD: Manifests with clinical features of classic acute GvHD but after 100 days of transplantation.

3. Classic chronic GVHD: Presents after 100 days of transplant with classic clinical features of chronic GvHD.

4. Overlap syndrome: May present at any time post-transplant with features of both acute and chronic GvHD .