Successful treatment of chronic graft-versus-host disease with extracorporeal photopheresis

Bone Marrow Transplant. 1994 Nov;14(5):845-8.

Abstract

A 43-year-old woman who had undergone allogeneic bone marrow transplant for chronic myeloid leukemia developed chronic GVHD. Despite cyclosporine A and low-dose glucocorticoids and later concomittent PUVA-therapy, chronic GVHD with severe sclerodermatous manifestations including joint contracture and liver damage progressed. The Karnofsky performance score dropped to under 50%. Extracorporeal photopheresis (ECP) instead of PUVA-therapy was started. To our knowledge, we here report the first case of successful treatment of extensive chronic GVHD with ECP.

Publication types

  • Case Reports

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Bone Marrow Transplantation / adverse effects*
  • Chronic Disease
  • Contracture / drug therapy
  • Contracture / etiology
  • Female
  • Graft vs Host Disease / drug therapy*
  • Graft vs Host Disease / etiology
  • Humans
  • Leukemia, Myelogenous, Chronic, BCR-ABL Positive / therapy
  • Photopheresis / methods*
  • Scleroderma, Systemic / drug therapy
  • Scleroderma, Systemic / etiology
  • Transplantation, Homologous