Jiro Inagaki

Mucormycosis is an opportunistic and progressive infection, while actinomycosis usually grows gradually and rarely develops in immunocompromised patients. Here we report a patient with Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia who developed a pulmonary actinomycosis and mucormycosis coinfection. Once the diagnosis of actinomycosis was confirmed by bronchoscopy, lobectomy performed before stem cell transplantation revealed mucormycosis. The patient successfully underwent transplantation using a therapeutic antifungal agent for mucormycosis. When an immunocompromised patient develops an infection of unknown etiology, physicians should consider these pathogens as the possible cause. In addition, surgical intervention should be considered as an important treatment option.

Background: Sinusoidal obstruction syndrome (SOS) is a life‐threatening complication after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). Most adult patients with SOS present with jaundice, whereas hyperbilirubinemia does not always occur in children. Additionally, while late‐onset SOS is rare in adults, 15‐20% of SOS cases develop beyond day 30 after HSCT in children.Procedure: We investigated the incidence and prognosis of children with anicteric and late‐onset SOS. We retrospectively analyzed the data of patients who developed SOS after HSCT conducted at our center between 2000 and 2016.Results: A total of 22 patients with a median age of 6.5 years (range: 0‐16), including 14 males and eight females, developed SOS. Eight of the twenty‐two patients were diagnosed as having anicteric SOS, and nine as having late‐onset SOS. Patients with anicteric SOS had significantly lower incidence of SOS‐related death at 100 days after HSCT (12.5% vs 64.3%, P = 0.03) and higher 2‐year overall survival (OS) rate (60.0% vs 14.3%, P = .04) than patients with icteric SOS. One patient with anicteric SOS died from progression of SOS. There were no significant differences observed in these endpoints between patients who developed SOS before and after 21 days from HSCT.Conclusions: Careful monitoring is needed for the development of SOS even in the absence of jaundice, and even at 3 weeksafter HSCT in children.

Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is closely correlated with graft failure and poor prognosis. Because of its rarity, the incidence, risk factors, and optimal treatment strategy are unclear. We analyzed data from cases of HLH following umbilical cord blood transplantation (UCBT) performed for pediatric patients at our center. Among 66 UCBT recipients, 5 developed HLH and imminent graft failure. The median time of diagnosis of HLH was 22 (range, 19 to 30) days after UCBT, and the cumulative incidence of HLH was 7.6% (95% confidence interval, 2.8-15.7) at day 60. In univariate analysis, the cumulative incidence of HLH was significantly higher in patients with infused CD34⁺ cells 5/kg than in patients with higher CD34⁺ cells. Patients with preengraftment infection showed a trend toward higher incidence of HLH compared with patients without any infection. All 5 patients with HLH received corticosteroids and low-dose etoposide (VP-16), with or without high-dose intravenous immunoglobulin. Following these treatments, successful engraftment was observed in 2 patients. Corticosteroids and low-dose VP-16 may be worthy of a trial before attempting salvage hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Further analyses are required to identify risk factors and to develop methods for prophylaxis, diagnosis, and treatment of HLH.

Introduction Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is one of the promising treatment strategies for children with refractory Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH), because of its immunomodulatory effects.Efficacy and indication of HSCT has been still undetermined. We analyzed the outcomes of HSCT in children with refractory LCH registered in the Transplant Registry Unified Management Program (TRUMP) conducted by the Japanese Society for Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation. Patients and methods Between 1996 and 2014, 30 patients 8Gy (10-12Gy) regimen, 3 received full dose busulfan (BU: 16mg/kg po or 17.6mg/kg iv) regimen. Seven received fludarabine (FLU: 125-180mg/m2) + melphalan (MEL: 70-180mg/m2) without TBI and 9 received FLU(120-180mg/m2)+MEL (140-180mg/m2) with low dose irradiation (2-5.1Gy) and the remaining 3 received other RIC regimens. Cyclosporine was used in 13 patients and tacrolimus was used in 16 patients for graft versus host disease (GVHD) prophylaxis. Donor sources were related donor in 9 patients and unrelated in 21 patients (cord blood 19 and bone marrow 2). Four related donors were father or mother and 3 of them were haplo-identical. In these patients, induction therapy at onset achieved a good (5/25), partial (8/25), no (4/25) and progressive (8/25) diseases. In regard to disease status at HSCT, recipients with no active diseae (NAD) were 4/25, active disease-regression (AD-r) 2/25, active disease-stable (AD-s) 4/25 and progressive (AD-p) 15/25. Eight patients received 2-chlorodeoxyadenosine (2-CdA), including 4 patients who received the combination of 2-CdA and high dose Ara-C before HSCT as salvage therapy. At HSCT, 15/23 (65%) patients were in primary induction failure and 8/23 (35%) experienced first or additional relapse, respectively. Transplantation outcomes Neutrophil recovery was observed in 24 patients and the median time to engraftment was 21 days. Platelets engraftment was observed in 17 patients and the median time to engraftment was 52 days. Acute GVHD of grade II - IV, chronic GVHD (cGVHD) were observed in 6 and 4 patients, respectively. Extensive cGVHD was observed in 3 patients who received MAC regimens (p= 0.079). Relapse after HSCT were observed 1 patient in RIC regimens and 2 patients in MAC (P=0.613). With follow-up of median 433 days (range 9-5307days) after HSCT, 17/30 (57%) patients are alive and 13 died. Death occurred within 3 months after HSCT in 8/13. The overall survival (OS) was not different between RIC and MAC (56.8% vs 63.6%, p=0.843). In regard to the correlation of disease status at HSCT and outcome, 6 patients with NAD/ AD-r had better outcome than 19 with AD-s/ AD-p (5-year OS 100% vs 52.1%, p=0.035). The 5-year FFS of the 16 patients who received FLU+ MEL based regimen were 68.8%, and were marginally better than those of the 14 patients who were conditioned with other regimens (68.8% (95%CI: 46.0-91.5) vs 42.9% (95%CI: 16.9-68.8), P=0.209). Discussion In conclusions, of 30 HSCT-recipients for refractory LCH, 17/30 (57%) are alive while post-transplant death occurred in 13/30 (43%). Our study showed that in regard to the correlation of disease status at HSCT and outcome, 6 patients with NAD/ AD-r had better outcome than 19 with AD-s/ AD-p (5-year OS 100% vs 52.1%, p=0.035). Novel bridging measures, such as targeted inhibition of the MAPK pathway, are required to stabilize the disease activity before HSCT.

We assessed the clinical outcomes of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (SCT) from alternative donors for pediatric patients with hematological malignancies, defining graft-versus-host disease (GVHD)-free, relapse-free survival (GRFS) as a composite endpoint. We also defined chronic GVHD-free, relapse-free survival (cGRFS) as survival without severe chronic GVHD, relapse, or death. The probabilities of 2-year disease-free survival from a human leukocyte antigen (HLA) matched unrelated donor (n = 57), related donor with HLA-1 antigen mismatch in the graft-versus-host direction (1Ag-GvH-MMRD, n = 28), and unrelated umbilical cord blood (n = 35) were 52.2, 38.5, and 40.4%, respectively (P = 0.14), and for 2-year GRFS were 26.2, 13.4, and 30.4%, respectively (P = 0.089), and for 2-year cGRFS were 36.2, 16.7, and 40.4%, respectively (P = 0.015). Of the three groups, the 1Ag-GvH-MMRD group showed a significantly higher cumulative incidence of severe cGVHD, and was identified as a significant risk factor for worse cGRFS. These results suggest that intensification of GVHD prophylaxis may be needed for SCT from 1Ag-GvH-MMRD. As with GRFS, cGRFS should be used as an endpoint of the clinical study to predict long-term morbidity and mortality for patients who need longer follow-up such as pediatric SCT recipients.