Treatment options for graft-versus-host disease

Abstract

Introduction: Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is the leading cause for mortality and morbidity after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (alloHSCT). Here, we discuss different options for systemic treatment of acute and chronic GVHD.

Areas covered: The literature search was performed using the Pubmed database. Only English literature was considered with the main focus on reported clinical trials and retrospective analysis.

Expert opinion: Steroids remains the backbone in first-line treatment of GVHD. Second-line treatment of acute or chronic GVHD is less well defined, due to the lack of evidence from randomized trials. Since the prognosis of steroid-refractory GVHD is often poor, new strategies to prevent and treat GVHD and to evaluate response to treatment are clearly needed.

Keywords::

• allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation
• bone marrow transplantation
• GVHD
• immunosuppressive therapy

Notes

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