Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation With Reduced Intensity Conditioning Regimen In Patients With Relapsed Hodgkin´s Lymphoma

Hodgkin´s Lymphoma (HL) is a highly curable disease. However, there are still patients with primary refractory disease or who relapse after first-line treatment, or even after high-dose chemotherapy with hematopoietic cell rescue. Allogeneic stem cell transplant (ASCT) is therapeutic for this patients.

To analyze the experience with relapsed HL patients that received ASCT with reduced intensity conditioning (RIC)regimen in 8 Argentine Medical Centers.

We performed a retrospective multicenter analysis from data obtained from medical records. Fifty-four patients with relapsed HL who received ASCT had a median age of 26years. The relationship between male / female was 1/1. Only 3 patients (5.5%) at the time of transplant had a performance status> 1 according to ECOG. Ninety-six percent of the patients had received previously autologous transplant. Most patients 43 (80%) received an identical sibling donor transplant. All patients receiving unrelated donor transplants had in vivo lymphocyte depletion as prophylaxis of graft versus host disease. Forty-three patients (79.6%) received as a conditioning regimen Fludarabine + Melphalan. The disease status at transplant was: complete remission (CR) 33%, partial remission (PR) 54%, stable disease / progressed (SD / PD) 13%.

With a median follow up of 2.7 years, actuarial overall survival (OS) at 1 and 5 years was 65% and 20% respectively and disease free survival (DFS) at 1 and 5 years was 35 % and 18% respectively. The incidence of acute GVHD grade II-IV was 31%. Patients in CR at the time of transplant showed significant differences compared with those who were not in CR in DFS (1-5 years 52-27% vs 19-14%, p=0.01), OS (1-5 years 76-38% vs 59-13%, p=0.02) and non relapsed mortality (NRM) (1-5 years 6-12% vs 34-39%, p=0.04). Age, PS, the use Fludarabine + Melphalan as conditioning regimen, unrelated donor, aGVHD, were not variables that modified the overall survival and disease-free survival.

The ASCT with RIC regimen is a feasible therapeutic option in patients with HL, especially in patients who can achieve CR. The low rate of DFS is still an issue in this setting, may be new drugs may help in optimizing pretransplant response status to improve patients’ outcome.

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.