Access through your institution Buy or subscribe Umbilical cord blood (UCB) transplants have been shown to produce comparable results to those obtained from mismatched unrelated bone marrow

transplants for adult patients with hematologic malignancies.1, 2 Despite the less stringent HLA-matching criteria used for UCB transplants, the incidence of GVHD is acceptable1, 2 without

compromising the antitumor effects.3, 4 However, most of the published studies on UCB transplants have involved primarily younger adults, with a median age of less than 40 years. Majhail _et

al._,5 recently addressed the role of unrelated UCB transplants for older patients and reported that the results of UCB transplants carried out in 43 adult patients older than 55 years were

out an analysis of the results of older patients who have undergone reduced-intensity mismatched UCB transplant in our program. Nine older patients, median age 60 years (range 48–77 years)

have received mismatched UCB; 78% of these patients received two UCB units to optimize the cell dose. Two patients received one HLA-mismatched, four patients two HLA-mismatched and three

patients three HLA-mismatched grafts. Clinical characteristics of these patients and the infused UCB units are shown in Table 1. There were six male patients and three female patients. Their

median weight was 72 kg (range 60–98 kg). Eight patients had AML, two with primary refractory AML, and one patient had advanced refractory CLL. Four patients had hematopoietic cell

transplantation comorbidity scores of ⩾2 before transplant.6 All patients received intravenous fludarabine (30 mg/m2/day for 5 days) and intravenous melphalan (100 mg/m2) as the conditioning

regimen. The median CD34 cell dose infused was 2.6 × 105/kg (range 1.8 × 105/kg–3.4 × 105/kg), and the median nucleated cell count was 2.3 × 107/kg (range 1.8 × 107/kg–3.8 × 107/kg). GVHD

prophylaxis in all patients consisted of oral cyclosporine starting day −2, and methylprednisone starting day +7 at 2 mg/kg/day until day +28 when it was reduced by half every week. The

methylprednisone was discontinued on day +56 in the absence of significant GVHD. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution ACCESS OPTIONS Access through your

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our FAQs * Contact customer support REFERENCES * Laughlin MJ, Eapen M, Rubinstein P, Wagner JE, Zhang M, Champlin RE _et al_. Outcomes after transplantation of cord blood or bone marrow from

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HCT. _Blood_ 2005; 106: 2912–2919. Article  CAS  Google Scholar  Download references AUTHOR INFORMATION AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Biotherapy and Stem Cell Transplant Program, Texas

Oncology, Amarillo, TX, USA S H Lim, W V Esler, P O Periman, D Beggs, Y Zhang & M Townsend * Oncology Unit, Northwest Texas Hospital Healthcare System, and Harrington Regional Medical

Center, Inc., Amarillo, TX, USA S H Lim, W V Esler, P O Periman, D Beggs, Y Zhang & M Townsend Authors * S H Lim View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed 

Google Scholar * W V Esler View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * P O Periman View author publications You can also search for this author

inPubMed Google Scholar * D Beggs View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Y Zhang View author publications You can also search for this author

inPubMed Google Scholar * M Townsend View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Correspondence to S H Lim. RIGHTS AND

PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Lim, S., Esler, W., Periman, P. _et al._ Reduced-intensity umbilical cord blood transplant for older adult patients.

_Bone Marrow Transplant_ 42, 685–686 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/bmt.2008.225 Download citation * Published: 18 August 2008 * Issue Date: November 2008 * DOI:

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