Frozen vs. nonfrozen bone marrow for autologous transplantation in lymphomas: A report from the Spanish GEL/TAMO Cooperative Group

Abstract

To investigate the impact of frozen and nonfrozen bone marrow on engraftment kinetics and disease outcome, 94 patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) autografted with frozen marrow (F group) were retrospectively compared with 38 who received marrow stored at 4° C or 10° C (NF group). The major end points of this study were time to hematopoietic recovery and early toxicity; disease response, diseasefree survival (DFS), and relapse rate were also analyzed. Upon comparison of the NF and F groups, no significant differences were found in the period of time required to achieve a granulocyte count higher than 0.5×10⁹/l (20 and 22 days, respectively,p=0.47) or a platelet count higher than 20×10⁹/l (28 and 27 days, respectively,p=0.54). In addition, both groups behaved similarly in respect to toxic death (NF group 13%, F group 22%,p=0.36), response rate (complete remission rate 78% in both groups), DFS (NF group 48%, F group 49%,p=0.66), and relapse rate (NF group 30, F group 19%,p=0.37). This study confirms that nonfrozen bone marrow is useful to support patients with NHL treated with myeloablative therapies.