We thank Vuaillat et al for reading our paper1 carefully with great interest.
Within this short correspondence we hope to elucidate the questions raised:
All 5 untreated patients met both the McDonald and the Barkhoff criteria and were diagnosed between 2002 and 2006 with the relapsing-remitting form of the disease. Therefore they had experienced more than one relapse episode of the disease.
The patients had the following blood-circulating CD34+ counts: 0.57/μL; 0.8/μL; 1.06/μL; 1.44/μL and 1.68/μL.
For CD34+ subset analysis we performed dual-color phenotyping, and all circulating CD34+ cells belonged to the subset of more committed progenitors coexpressing CD38.
Authorship
Conflict-of-interest disclosure: The author declares no competing financial interests.
Correspondence: Fabian Zohren, Heinrich Heine University, Moorenstr 5, Duesseldorf, Germany 40225; e-mail: fabian.zohren@med.uni-duesseldorf.de.
