Paternity after bone marrow transplantation following conditioning with total body irradiation

A 28-year-old man with chronic myeloid leukaemia received an allogeneic bone marrow transplant after conditioning with daunorubicin, cyclophosphamide and fractionated total body irradiation (TBI). Four years later his wife gave birth to a healthy child. Although the patient was azospermic serologic HLA testing suggested that the patient was the father of the child. DNA fingerprinting as well as analysis of three variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR) loci D1S80 (MCT118), D17S30 (YNZ22) and the apolipoprotein B hypervariable region (apo B 3') gave unequivocal results showing that the patient was the father. Fathering a child after TBI-containing regimen has been very rare and this is the first case where the paternity has been proven with DNA methodology.