[Kinetics of vaccine antibodies to tetanus toxoid, diphtheria toxoid, measles virus, poliomyelitis virus and pneumococci after allogenic and autologous bone marrow transplantation and booster immunization. 1: The kinetics of vaccine antibodies to tetanus toxoid after allogenic and autologous bone marrow transplantation].

Today BMT belongs to the established methods of treatment in haematology and oncology. Because of the constant increase of healthy long-term survivors after BMT the problem of immunological reconstitution and eventual possible late effects gets more and more importance. One problem, which til now has been few attention paid to, is that of the protection by vaccination after BMT. We report on the kinetics of the tetanus-antitoxin in 20 patients after allogeneic or autologous BMT and demonstrate the influence of a graft-versus-host disease and its therapy on the antibody kinetics. In the group of allogeneic transplanted children without a GvHD the tetanus-antitoxin titers felt below their detection range after a time of about 8 months whereas in the group with GvHD this effect already occurred after nearly 4 months. The autologous transplanted patients have a positive antibody level til the time of 20 months after BMT. As a consequence of the lost protection by vaccination after BMT follows the necessity of revaccinations respectively of boostering after immunological reconstitution.