Outcomes similar for therapy-related, de novo MDS after haplo-HSCT

Patients with therapy-related myelodysplastic syndrome (t-MDS) and de novo MDS have comparable outcomes after haploidentical hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (haplo-HSCT), according to a study published online Feb. 8 in Clinical and Experimental Medicine.

Feifei Tang, from Peking University People's Hospital in Beijing, and colleagues conducted a retrospective analysis of 96 patients with MDS who received haplo-HSCT between January 2015 and December 2021 to compare clinical outcomes for t-MDS and de novo MDS. Using the case-pair method in a 1:8 ratio, 11 patients with t-MDS and 85 with de novo MDS were matched.

The researchers found that three-year overall survival and disease-free survival were not significantly different after haplo-HSCT for t-MDS versus de novo MDS (72.7 versus 75.1 percent and 54.5 versus 67.0 percent, respectively). The three-year cumulative incidence of relapse was 36.4 and 15.5 percent, respectively; no significant difference was seen in relapse in a multivariate analysis. The cumulative nonrelapse mortality rates at three years were 9.1 and 17.6 percent.

"Our study first demonstrated that t-MDS has comparable outcomes to de novo MDS after haplo-HSCT," the authors write. "Therefore, haplo-HSCT is one of the feasible options for t-MDS patients if there is no human leukocyte antigen-matched sibling."