Guillain-Barré syndrome after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation

Guillain-Barré syndrome is a rare complication in the setting of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. We report three children with T cell lymphoma/leukemia in whom this syndrome developed soon after they received unrelated donor transplants. The rapid onset of symptoms raises the concern that the bone marrow transplant conditioning regimen (ie, total body irradiation, cyclophosphamide and cytosine arabinoside) might have precipitated the clinical syndrome of ascending polyneuropathy. Although central nervous system toxicity has been well described with high-dose cytosine arabinoside therapy, peripheral neuropathy of the Guillain-Barré type has been reported only infrequently. We review possible factors contributing to the development of this syndrome in these three patients.