Ruxolitinib is a promising option for treating steroid-refractory acute graft-versus-host disease (SR-aGVHD) after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT). In this study, we describe ruxolitinib treatment for SR-aGVHD in HSCT patients with Epstein-Barr virus-associated hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (EBV-HLH) to evaluate its effectiveness. We evaluated the outcomes of 12 patients who received ruxolitinib for SR-aGVHD between January 2017 and March 2019. Of the 12 patients who received ruxolitinib, 7 patients achieved a complete response (CR), 3 had a partial response (PR), and 2 experienced treatment failure (TF). OS and CR rates were 83.3% and 58.3%, respectively. Moreover, CR was achieved by the six patients who had aGVHD with skin involvement. The mean time of steroid application in the patients who received ruxolitinib was 28.1 days. Median survival after HSCT was 64.6 weeks. The adverse effects of ruxolitinib included grades 3 to 4 neutropenia (n = 7) and grades 3 to 4 thrombocytopenia (n = 6). Cytomegalovirus reactivation was observed in three patients. A high rate of CR and short steroid application time of ruxolitinib as a salvage treatment were observed in HSCT patients with EBV-HLH. Consequently, from this study, it was determined that ruxolitinib is an optimal choice to treat SR-aGVHD in patients with EBV-HLH.
Keywords: Acute GVHD; Allogenic stem cell transplantation; Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis; Ruxolitinib.