Pancreatic atrophy in patients with chronic graft-versus-host disease

To determine if patients with chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) develop greater loss of pancreatic tissue than patients without cGVHD.

This is an IRB-approved, HIPAA-compliant retrospective study of patients receiving allogeneic HSCT at our institution from 01/2006 to 01/2010 with abdominal CT performed within 3 months prior to HSCT and CT performed at least 3 months after HSCT. Measurement of glandular tissue thickness of the head, body, and tail of the pancreas was performed independently by two radiologists blinded to clinical data. Statistical analysis was performed using the Student t-test, and interobserver agreement was evaluated with linear-weighted kappa.

117 patients underwent HSCT during study period, with 36 patients meeting inclusion criteria. 22 subjects (61%) had clinical features of cGVHD, and 14 patients (39%) did not have evidence of cGVHD. Following HSCT, there was a significant decrease in mean total thickness (10.9%, p = 0.002) of the pancreas in the group of patients with cGVHD. The change from pretreatment to the nadir in pancreatic thickness was significantly greater in patient with cGVHD (13.9 ± 12.1 mm), but not in non-cGVHD patients (5.4 ± 4.7 mm) (p = 0.02), with head of the pancreas atrophy accounting for the difference (decrease of 4.8 ± 4.6 mm in cGVHD patients vs. 1.6 ± 2.1 mm in non-cGVHD patients (p = 0.02)).

Patients with cGVHD develop significantly greater loss of pancreatic glandular tissue than patients without cGVHD following HSCT, with atrophy of pancreatic head being a major contributor.