Rituximab-induced interstitial lung disease in a patient with immune thrombocytopenia purpura.

We report the case of an 84-year-old man with refractory immune thrombocytopenia purpura (ITP) who was treated with rituximab and subsequently developed severe interstitial lung disease. There has been increasing use of rituximab in the treatment of ITP with success rates of up to 62% in adult patients with recurrent ITP. Interstitial lung disease is a rare but recognised complication of rituximab but has been rarely reported in the setting of ITP.

Ex vivo purging with NK-92 prior to autografting for chronic myelogenous leukemia.

Although controversial, purging of the autograft may be necessary to optimize transplant outcome, especially if better treatments become available to eliminate or control residual disease that may be left after the conditioning regimen. The intent of this study was to show that immunological purging with the cytotoxic cell line NK-92 effectively reduces the number of clonogenic cells and that the method can be performed in compliance with GMP. Owing to the easy quantification of bcr-abl transcripts, chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) was used as a model disease for proof of principle. A detection level of 10(-7) bcr-abl+ cells and purging efficiency of four logs were achievable for the bcr-abl+ cell line, K562. Leukapheresis products collected from CML patients after stem cell mobilization were then tested. For all patients tested, residual CML cells were highly sensitive to purging by NK-92 with a purging efficacy of several logs. No adverse effect on hematopoietic progenitor cell function was noted. These results demonstrate the efficacy of NK-92 as a purging agent to decrease or eliminate malignant contamination of autologous stem cell grafts and establish proof of principle for ex vivo purging of CML autografts using cytotoxic effector cells.

Intravesicular instillation of E-aminocaproic acid for patients with adenovirus-induced hemorrhagic cystitis.

Hemorrhagic cystitis (HC) is a known complication of allogenic BMT. We report a case of a 28-year-old female with CML in chronic phase, which was treated with a matched unrelated donor (MUD) transplant, complicated by hemorrhagic cystitis on day +42 after the transplant. Adenovirus was isolated from the urine and she was treated with ribavirin, 1 g twice a day for 8 days. We report the use of Amicar (E-aminocaproic acid), 2.5 g solution as bladder instillation to treat the intractable hematuria.

Transformation of essential thrombocythaemia to T cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.

Leukaemic transformation of essential thrombocythaemia is a rare event and is usually associated with previous treatment with either alkylating agents or radioactive phosphorous. We describe a patient with essential thrombocythaemia who developed an acute leukaemia of T cell phenotype following hydroxyurea therapy. The T cell phenotype of the blasts suggests the target cell for leukaemic transformation was a pluripotential stem cell.

Fludarabine Melphalan reduced-intensity conditioning allotransplanation provides similar disease control in lymphoid and myeloid malignancies: analysis of 344 patients.

This was an Australasian Bone Marrow Transplant Recipient Registry (ABMTRR)-based retrospective study assessing the outcome of Fludarabine Melphalan (FluMel) reduced-intensity conditioning between 1998 and 2008. Median follow-up was 3.4 years. There were 344 patients with a median age of 54 years (18-68). In all, 234 patients had myeloid malignancies, with AML (n=166) being the commonest indication. There were 110 lymphoid patients with non-hodgkins lymphoma (NHL) (n=64) the main indication. TRM at day 100 was 14% with no significant difference between the groups. OS and disease-free survival (DFS) were similar between myeloid and lymphoid patients (57 and 50% at 3 years, respectively). There was no difference in cumulative incidence of relapse or GVHD between groups. Multivariate analysis revealed four significant adverse risk factors for DFS: donor other than HLA-identical sibling donor, not in remission at transplant, previous autologous transplant and recipient CMV positive. Chronic GVHD was associated with improved DFS in multivariate analysis predominantly due to a marked reduction in relapse (HR:0.44, P=0.003). This study confirms that FluMel provides durable and equivalent remissions in both myeloid and lymphoid malignancies. Disease stage and chronic GVHD remain important determinants of outcome for FluMel allografting.

Immunologic methods of purging in autologous stem cell transplantation.

Malignant cells in the stem cell product have been shown to contribute to disease recurrence in patients who relapse after autologous transplantation. Immunologic methods of purging tumor cells from stem cell products focus on either removal of specific target cells or positive selection of HPC. mAb are the key component of many purging strategies and are employed both in vitro and in vivo. Cytotoxic cellular therapies are an emerging method of tumor cell eradication.

Measuring the albumin excretion rate: agreement between methods and biological variability.

A timed urine collection is necessary to determine the excretion rate of albumin (AER) but such specimens are tedious to collect and frequently inaccurate. Albumin excretion can also be quantified by the use of the albumin:creatinine ratio in randomly obtained specimens. In the present study the agreement between AER as measured on a 24-h urine collection and as estimated from the albumin:creatinine ratio is determined. Previously published studies have examined the correlation rather than the agreement between these methods and not taken into account the biological variability of AER. Thirty patients with diabetes who had normal renal function, but varying degrees of albuminuria, produced two 24-h specimens and two random daytime specimens of urine. AER was measured on the former and estimated from the latter by multiplying the albumin:creatinine ratio by an estimate of that individual's creatinine excretion rate. Agreement between the methods and the biological variability was determined by using appropriate statistical methodology, the main outcome measure being the limits of agreement between repeat values for both measurements and both estimates of AER, and between the averages of the measurements and the estimates. The limits of agreement between repeated 24-h measurements were wide, the second specimen being 33 to 490% of the first. The estimates of AER gave values numerically similar to the measurements. The limits of agreement between the two estimates did not differ significantly from those of the measurements, nor did the limits of agreement when the average of the measurements and the average of the estimates were compared (all NS).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)