A new blood test has been developed by Researchers to diagnose and examine the risk of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), which is often a deadly complication that affects people who have had a bone marrow transplant because of cancer or other conditions. The blood test will help doctors to comprehend whether patients require more intense treatment.
GVHD is the same as an organ rejection syndrome but this one is for the transplant of bone marrow. The disease is initiated once the immune cells in the donor bone marrow start to mingle with the recipient’s cells and consider the cells as foreign. The immune cells will then start to attach the recipient’s cells. The first signs of the disease are commonly skin rash, so it is very hard to diagnose. However, if nothing is done to stop the disease, GVHD can destroy internal organs. It does also have a proven record of being deadly for up to 30 to 40 percent of all cases. Moreover, GVHD is the main cause of death for patients who have had a bone marrow transplanted.
Clinics do regularly use strong treatment to avoid the deadly risk of GVHD. The initial treatment is to induce a high dose of steroids, which does eventually suppress the body’s immune response. However, without proper diagnosis this approach is perilous. It put one at the risk of infection and the potential of further deterioration for cancer patients. According to James Ferrara of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor the co-author and a pediatric oncologist, the case of “… overtreating some patients and undertreating others” is often a fatal issue in medical care.
However, Ferrara’s team has been working on establishing an early diagnosis method. They took a weekly plasma extract from patients who had recently had a bone marrow transplanted. They examined the volume of elafin, which is an anti-inflammatory protein that is generated by the human body as a reaction to skin GVHD. This scrutiny was conducted on 20 patients who did not have the disease developed and 10 patients who had. In an online report in the Science Translational Medicine it was published that the level of elafin was on average as much as 3 times higher for those who suffered from skin GVHD.
Subsequently, the researchers had a sample size of 159 patients, which they divided into two groups. The first group had a plasma level of elafin, which was above normal. The next group had a level of elafin, which was below average. The two groups were followed to understand their long-term survival. Only after 12 months, it was seen that patients having had a high elafin level was three times much likelier to die from GVHD than those in the low-elafin group. Ferrara suggests that in the future clinical test must be developed to evaluate “elafin levels of a transplant patient with a rash to decide whether to initiate treatment”. The researchers predict that if it is possible to analyse the level of elafin before GVHD symptoms are seen then it might be possible to know if the patient is at risk even before a rash appears.
Corey Cultler who is a hematological oncologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston says that GVHD is commonly spotted with an intense examination of skin rashes. However, the use of more diagnostic test is positive. Finding the risk of GVHD before a rash is seen “…could be extremely valuable,”
Source: Science Magazine
Anti Aging, Bioscience, Health And Aging, Nanotechnology, Stem cells
Sun, Jul 4, 2010
Anti Aging, Bioscience, Health And Aging, Nanotechnology, Stem cells