The London Cord Blood Bank: Analysis of banking and transplantation outcome
Davey S., Armitage S., Rocha V., Garnier F., Brown J., Brown CJ., Warwick R., Fehily D., Watt S., Gluckman E., Vora A., Contreras M., Navarrete CV.
Cord blood units (n = 5500) stored at the London Cord Blood Bank, including 59 units transplanted into a high risk and heterogeneous group of patients, were analysed. Transplant outcome data was available for 44 patients with a median clinical follow-up of 14 months (range 3-44 months). Over 40% of the collected units were of ethnic minority origin with a median volume of 79 ml (range 40-240 ml) and a median total nucleated cell (TNC) count of 11.9 × 109/l (range 10.0-24.8 × 109/l). The average patient's weight was 28 kg (range 5-80 kg) and the median age was 8 years (range 0.7-40 years). The median number of nucleated cells infused was 4 × 107/kg (range 1.10-16 × 107/kg). Neutrophil engraftment of 0.5 × 109/l was observed in 33 (74±%) patients with an average time of 28 days (range 11-60). The Kaplan-Meier estimate of acute graft-versus-host disease (grade II >) at day 100 was 37 ± 7% and in 27 (62%) patients, it was grade I or absent. The overall survival and disease-free survival at 2 years was 49 ± 8% and 41 ± 8%, respectively. Two years after transplantation the survival rate was 69% and 54% for patients receiving a 6/6 or 5/6 HLA matched units, respectively. Infection was the main cause of transplanted related mortality in these patients. © 2004 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.