The MDS Beacon™

Researchers from the United States and Spain recently found that lower-risk myelodysplastic syndromes patients may benefit from early treatment with a certain kind of stem cell transplant.

Specifically, the patients benefited from donor stem cell transplants without T-cells, a type of white blood cell.

Over 60 percent of patients experienced survival times greater than five years, and the rate of graft-versus-host disease, a common transplant-related complication, was low.

According to the researchers, these findings support the use of transplantation without T-cells in lower-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) patients.

The findings were…

Results of an analysis show that early stem cell transplantation with reduced-intensity chemotherapy provides a survival benefit for older patients with higher-risk myelodysplastic syndromes, but not for those with lower-risk disease.

The study authors concluded that early transplantation is not an appropriate treatment strategy for older, lower-risk patients unless quality of life is significantly impaired.

The findings were presented at the 2011 American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting in San Diego on Sunday.

Donor stem cell transplantation is currently the only available cure for myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). Patients undergo chemotherapy…

New research from Japan indicates that low levels of the blood protein ferritin are associated with better outcomes in myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) patients who undergo stem cell transplantation.

“In both [standard- and high-risk] MDS, elevated ferritin has a negative effect on the outcomes of transplantation,” said study author Dr. Takayoshi Tachibana of the Yokohama City University Medical Center in Yokohama, Japan.

Dr. Tachibana pointed out that patients with elevated ferritin levels should nevertheless undergo stem cell transplantation because “We think transplantation is the most promising therapy [for MDS patients].”

Instead…

Myelodysplastic syndromes patients who receive stem cell transplants from matched unrelated donors experience higher overall survival rates than patients who receive transplants from related donors with one mismatch, according to a retrospective study performed in Japan.

However, the study authors pointed out that this finding was only significant for patients with standard-risk disease. In patients with high-risk disease, the differences in survival were not statistically significant.

In addition, patients with standard-risk disease who received transplants from related donors with a mismatch at the HLA B gene experienced lower overall survival…

Treatment with Clolar and high-dose cytarabine, followed by reduced-intensity preparative therapy prior to stem cell transplantation, may be effective and safe in patients with high-risk leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes, according to a recent retrospective study conducted in Germany.

The study authors suggest that this protocol may be particularly useful for older, high-risk patients with advanced disease who cannot undergo conventional preparative therapy.

However, they point out that prospective trials are needed to confirm their findings.

High-dose chemotherapy is traditionally given to patients prior to stem cell transplantation in order to…