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This article examines the occurrence of liver complications in patients with myelofibrosis who undergo allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). The study found that liver adverse events (AEs) were more common than expected, with 64% of patients experiencing liver AEs within the first 100 days after HSCT. The most common liver AEs were caused by the conditioning regimen. Risk factors for liver toxicity included worse performance status, higher comorbidity index, and higher prognostic scoring system score. The study also found that hyperbilirubinemia and hepatic graft-versus-host disease were associated with increased mortality. The text emphasizes the importance of monitoring liver complications in HSCT patients and suggests using imaging and biopsies to determine the cause and guide treatment. The study included various factors in the analysis and was approved by the appropriate ethics committee. [Extracted from the article]

Summary: Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) and chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia (CMML) can progress to secondary acute myeloid leukaemia (sAML). We compared the outcome of 4214 sAML patients who received allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo‐HSCT) from an unrelated (62%) or human leucocyte antigen (HLA)‐identical sibling donor (38%) according the underlying disease: MDS (n = 3541), CMML (n = 251) or MPN (n = 422). After a median follow up of 46·5 months, the estimated 3‐year progression‐free (PFS) and overall survival (OS) for the entire group was 36% (34–37%) and 41% (40–43%), respectively. The cumulative incidence of relapse and non‐relapse mortality (NRM) was 37% (35–39%) and 27% (26–29%), respectively. In a multivariable analysis for OS, besides age (P < 0·001), unrelated donor (P = 0·011), cytomegalovirus ± constellation (P = 0·007), Karnofsky index ≤ 80 (P < 0·001), remission status (P < 0·001), peripheral blood as stem cell source (P = 0·009), sAML from MPN (P = 0·003) remained a significant factor in comparison to sAML from MDS, while worse outcome of sAML from CMML did not reach statistical significance (P = 0·06). This large registry study demonstrates a major impact of the underlying disease on outcome of sAML after allo‐HSCT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which examined the short-term efficacy and safety of antithymocyte globulin treatment (ATG) in elderly patients with acquired aplastic anaemia. Also cited are the combined horse-derived ATG and ciclosporin (CSA) as standard first-line immunosuppressive therapy (IST) for the disease, and the results showing that age should not be an absolute contraindication for using ATG and CSA to treat older patients with acquired aplastic anaemia.