Absence of Pretransplant Peripheral Blasts is Favorable Factor in Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation for Advanced...

To clarify the effects of leukemic burden on the outcome of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) undergoing allogeneic stem cell transplantation (allo-SCT) in non-complete remission (non-CR), we retrospectively analyzed data from 377 patients with ALL who underwent 1 of 4 allo-SCTs: related bone marrow transplantation (BMT), related peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT), unrelated BMT, or unrelated cord blood tranplantation (CBT), with a non-CR status. In multivariable analysis, peripheral blood (PB) blast% was significantly correlated (hazard ratio = 1.012, P < .001) with poor survival, but not bone marrowtransplantation (BM) blast% (hazard ratio 1.002, P =.398), indicating that PB blast% had a stronger negative impact on overall survival (OS). Patients could be categorized into 1 of 3 groups based on the hazard ratio of overall mortality: (1) the absence of blasts in PB, (2) 0%