TNF alpha levels are increased during bone marrow transplantation conditioning in patients who develop acute GVHD

TNF alpha levels were determined by ELISA in serum from 112 BMT patients during pre-transplant conditioning. Patients who developed post-transplant complications had significantly higher TNF alpha levels than those without complications (mean 620 pg/ml vs 440 pg/ml, P = 0.04). In particular this effect is associated with patients who developed grade II-IV acute GVHD (mean 960 pg/ml, P < 0.001) and chronic GVHD (mean 724 pg/ml, P = 0.001). High TNF alpha levels were the only statistically significant risk factor for acute GVHD. IL-1 beta and IL-6 levels were not correlated with TNF alpha levels or posttransplantation complications. In multivariate analysis of chronic GVHD, patient age > 17 years and CMV disease were the only statistically significant risk factors. Relapse was associated with low levels of TNF alpha during conditioning (mean 318 pg/ml, P = 0.02). In multivariate analysis, high risk disease was the only factor that correlated with relapse. Low risk patients had significantly higher levels than high risk patients (551 vs 377, P= 0.04). CML and MDS patients had higher TNF alpha levels than acute leukemia patients. There was no difference in TNF alpha levels between patients conditioned with BU/CY and CY/TBI. We conclude that determination of TNF alpha levels during conditioning may be useful in the prediction of acute GVHD.