Oral acute graft versus host disease after donor lymphocyte infusions: Clinicopathological characterization in a...

Donor lymphocyte infusions (DLI) are used after hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) in order to boost the graft-versus-tumor effect. The most significant toxicity is acute or chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), whose clinical symptoms mirror those occurring after HSCT. By contrast, oral acute GVHD lesions have been exceptionally described post-DLI. We report on a monocenter cohort of 12 adult patients that developed oral acute GVHD after DLI. The majority was treated for acute myeloid leukemia. A total of 29 DLI treatments were applied and the median time between the last DLI and the oral mucosal lesions was 42 days. Most patients presented these oral lesions concomitant with skin lesions and none of them had exclusive oral involvement. Oral lichenoid changes were observed in 11 patients, including plaque-like lesions and/or reticulated white streaks consistent with Wickham's striae, affecting mainly the buccal mucosa and dorsal or lateral aspects of the tongue. Mucosal histopathological findings showed a patchy-to-florid lichenoid interface dermatitis for 3 biopsied patients. Eight patients also experienced salivary gland changes. The treatment of oral lesions included high- to very high-potency topical corticosteroids in the majority of patients. Oral GVHD lesions have seldom been described after DLI, and only exceptionally in an acute setting. Our results are not consistent with those reported in the literature evaluating GVHD after DLI. In fact, oral acute GVHD lesions post-DLI appeared very common and similar to the oral lichenoid reactions of chronic GVHD following HSCT. The main limitations of this work are its retrospective design and the relatively small sample size.