Long-term follow-up of chimerical state of the patients transplanted for different haematologic diseases

Long-term follow-up of peripheral cellular chimerism in patients treated with BMT or PBSCT revealed the usefulness of their continuous monitoring at molecular level. Our results are based on monitoring of 120 patients, who were followed for at least 24 months. Comparison of the patients treated for chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), acute myelocytic leukemia (AML), acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and aplastic anaemia (AA) revealed that mixed chimerism was practically absent in MDS and relatively long-lasting in ALL and AA (regardless to substantially different post-transplantation treatment). The first disease relapses signalized by molecular checking of mixed peripheral chimerism were observed also after a period of remission lasting for several years. Molecular watching enables us to detect relapses at their very beginning that would remain hidden to less sensitive methods. We believe that all of the transplanted patients ought to be monitored for residual disease i.e. cellular chimerism using molecular methods without time limits. On the other hand low level of mixed cellular chimerism is not necessarily a sign of disease progression and can remain unchanged as "status quo" for a very long period.