Marrow transplantation: the Seattle experience

Marrow transplantation is effective treatment for a number of hematological diseases in patients under the age of 50 who have an HLA-identical sibling donor. It is successful in the treatment of aplastic anemia with 70-85% long-term survival. It offers 10-30% apparent cures for patients with acute leukemia who have relapsed at least once, and for those with chronic myelocytic leukemia in blast crisis. Although still somewhat controversial, it appears to be the treatment of choice for patients with acute nonlymphoblastic leukemia in first chemotherapy induced remission, and for those with chronic myelogenous leukemia in the chronic phase since approximately 50-60% of these patients experience long-term, disease-free survival. Patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia grafted in second or subsequent remission may expect a 30% "cure" of their disease. Marrow grafting is the only effective treatment for many patients with inherited immunologic deficiencies and certain genetic storage diseases. Cures of congenital Fanconi's anemia, Blackfan-Diamond anemia, osteopetrosis, paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria and thalassemia major have been achieved. Marrow transplantation is being explored for the therapy of patients with lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease, preleukemia, multiple myeloma, hairy cell leukemia, small cell lung cancer, testicular cancer, ovarian cancer and neuroblastoma. Marrow transplantation has been limited by the fact that many patients do not have HLA-identical siblings and very few have monozygotic twins. More recently, marrow transplants from HLA-nonidentical family members and even from unrelated donors have been successfully explored.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)