Impact of hematogones on the long-term outcomes of single-unit cord blood transplantation for adult patients

Abstract

Hematogones are normal B-lymphocyte precursors identified in the regenerative state of the bone marrow following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). To evaluate the impact of hematogones on long-term outcomes after single-unit cord blood transplantation (CBT), we retrospectively analyzed 134 adult patients at our institute. At the median time of 41 days (range, 20 to 77 days) after CBT, the median proportion of morphological hematogones in bone marrow was found to be 2.4% (range, 0 to 13.0%). In the patients with standard-risk, the higher proportion of morphological hematogones was associated with lower transplant-related mortality (TRM) after CBT. The proportion of hematogones did not affect the subsequent absolute lymphocyte counts in the peripheral blood and serum immunoglobulin G levels six months later after CBT. These data shows that morphological hematogones in the routine bone marrow analysis might be a practical and easily evaluable method of predicting outcomes after CBT.

Keywords:

• B-lymphocyte
• cord blood transplantation
• hematogones
• hematopoietic stem cell transplantation
• immune reconstitution
• transplant-related mortality

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all of the physicians and staff at the hospital and the cord blood banks in Japan for their help in this study, and are greatly indebted to Motoko Mizukami, Etsuko Nagai, and Tomomi Sato for their excellent technical assistance.

Potential conflict of interest

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10428194.2016.1180687.