Objective: To compare donor graft characteristics and clinical outcomes in recipients of allogeneic heamatopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) using GCSF primed bone marrow (GBM) and steady-state bone marrow (SBM) as stem cell sources.
Study design: Observational study. Place and Duration of the Study: Department of Clinical Haematology, Armed Forces Bone Marrow Transplant Centre, Rawalpindi, Pakistan, from August 2018 to October 2020.
Methodology: Eighty patients undergoing allogeneic HSCT were analysed. Among these, forty each received GBM and SBM from HLA identical siblings. Graft characteristics, such as total nucleated cells, CD34+ cell yield; clinical outcomes such as neutrophil and platelet engraftment, primary and secondary graft failure (GF), as well as the frequency of acute and chronic graft versus host disease (GvHD), were recorded and compared using the t-test, with significance at p <0.05.
Results: A statistically significant difference was observed in CD34+ dose with median dose 7.68 (p=0.002) but not in TNC dose with meadin dose 5 (p=0.86). Neutrophil engraftment occurred much more quickly with median of 13.43 days in the GBM than SBM group (p=0.025). While no statistically significant difference (p=0.89) in platelet engraftment was reported in both SBM and GBM. At the same time, patients with both GBM and SBM transplants showed a comparable ratio of acute to chronic GvHD and primary to secondary GF.
Conclusion: GBM is associated with better CD34+ stem cell yield and quicker neutrophil engraftment in clinical outcomes.
Key words: Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, Bone marrow, Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.