Chronic GVHD Can Be a Long-Lasting Burden on Patients’ Lives Post Transplant
Chronic GVHD (cGVHD) is the primary cause of non-relapse mortality in recipients of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant.1
Although cGVHD is typically diagnosed more than 100 days following transplant, the pathogenesis of cGVHD may begin as early as it does in acute GVHD—at the time of transplant.2-4
cGVHD manifests as a heterogenous disease that may occur in any of several organ systems, including skin, mouth, eyes, gut, lungs, and liver.2
cGVHD involves a cascade of events, including early inflammation and tissue injury, dysregulated immunity, and aberrant tissue repair with fibrosis that leads to irreversible tissue damage.2
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References
- MacDonald KPA, Betts BC, Couriel D. Emerging therapeutics for the control of chronic graft-versus-host disease. Biol Blood Marrow Transplant. 2018;24(1):19-26.
- Cooke KR, Luznik L, Sarantopoulos S, et al. The biology of chronic graft-versus-host disease: a task force report from the National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Project on criteria for clinical trials in chronic graft-versus-host disease. Biol Blood Marrow Transplant. 2017;23(2):211-234.
- Zeiser R, Blazar BR. Pathophysiology of chronic graft-versus-host disease and therapeutic targets. N Engl J Med.2017;377: 2565-2579.
- Soares MV, Azevedo RI, Ferreira IA, et al. Naïve and stem cell memory T cell subset recovery reveals opposing reconstitution patterns in CD4 and CD8 T cells in chronic graft vs. host disease. Front Immunol. 2019;10:334.