Tuesday 22 May 2012

T+334: Chimerism Results

I rang the hospital to find out the results of the chimerism test, and I am pleased to say that the results were quite good. The fresh dose of mature lymphocytes from my brother seem to be working well, and there is only a small amount of my original host lymphocytes remaining; all of the B-cells are now donor, only a few T-cells of my own remain. They think that the mature lymphocytes are probably still doing good work, even 3 months after the infusion, and they do no plan another infusion just yet (remember, they took enough for four doses back in February). Considering I have only had very mild GVH (just some skin rash), I am very pleasantly surprised that the graft-versus-leukaemia effect has happened. They plan to do another chimerism test in June, which (given that there is some considerable cost associated with the test) I take to mean that they expect my remaining host cells to have been mopped up by then!

As I said last time, even when I have no remaining blood cells of my own there is still a chance of relapse, but this is the best outcome one can expect from the transplant.

No comments:

Post a Comment