Quality of harvest and role of cell dose in unrelated bone marrow transplantation: An Italian bone marrow donor registry-gruppo Italiano trapianto di midollo osseo study

In this study, we investigated the factors affecting cell dose harvest and the role of cell dose on outcome. We analysed data from a cohort of 703 patients who underwent unrelated bone marrow transplantation facilitated by IBMDR in GITMO centers between 2002 and 2008. The median-infused cell doses is 3.7 × 10⁸/kg, the correlation between the nucleated cells requested from transplant centers and those harvested by collection centers was adequate. A harvested/requested cells ratio lower than 0.5 was observed only in 3% of harvests. A volume of harvested marrow higher than the median value of 1270 ml was related to a significant lower infused cell dose (χ²: 44.4; P <0.001). No patient-or donor-related variables significantly influenced the cell dose except for the recipient younger age (χ²: 95.7; P <0.001) and non-malignant diseases (χ²: 33.8; P <0.001). The cell dose resulted an independent predictor factor for a better outcome in patients affected by nonmalignant disease (P = 0.05) while early disease malignant patients receiving a lower cell dose showed a higher risk of relapse (P = 0.05).