Analyses conducted at the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR) investigate the relationship between chronic Graft Versus Host Disease (cGVHD), nonrelapse mortality (NRM), and patient age. The authors’ findings indicate that older patients do not exhibit a higher NRM compared to younger patients, with higher overall survival (OS) rates in patients with mild or moderate cGVHD regardless of age.

The outcomes in older cGVHD patients resulting from allo-HCT has not been thoroughly studied, and so researchers divided participants into four groups in order to observe patient outcomes, with patients 60 years of age or older and patients aged 40 to 59 years old divided based on the presence of cGVHD.

A comparison of CIBMTR data (comprising 4,429 patients) yielded the conclusion that the risk of post-allo-HCT patients developing cGVHD was not significantly different between the younger and older cohorts. Further, while a greater risk of NRM was highlighted in the older cohort, the researchers noted that this age group contained greater rates of allo-HCT, which would predictably result in higher rates of NRM. Moreover, researchers did not observe a significant correlation between patient age and cGVHD diagnosis, further exhibiting that older patient age is not an increased risk factor for NRM.

Reference:

Bhatt VR, Wang T, Chen K, et al. Chronic Graft-versus-Host Disease, Nonrelapse Mortality, and Disease Relapse in Older versus Younger Adults Undergoing Matched Allogeneic Peripheral Blood Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation: A Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research Analysis [published online ahead of print, 2021 Oct 9]. Transplant Cell Ther. 2021;S2666-6367(21)01293-8.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtct.2021.10.002

Tags: GVHD, Mortality, analysis, chronic GVHD, factors, graft-versus-host disease, nonrelapse, nonrelapse morttality, age, relationship, patient age