Role of immunosuppressive drugs for prevention of graft-v-host disease after bone marrow transplantation.

In a series of 198 patients we compared various methods of prevention of GVHD. One hundred and thirty-three patients were treated with CSA alone, 44 with the combination of CSA and MTX, and 21 with CSA after marrow T cell depletion. The incidence of GVHD greater than or equal to II was 35% in the CSA group, 22% in the CSA+MTX group and 14% in the T depleted group. The actuarial survival was 55.4%, 52.3% and 55.1% respectively. These results show that the improvement of methods of prevention of GVHD did not affect significantly long term survival after BMT.